Oleksandr Akymenko

Adjunct Professor
Oleksandr Akymenko
  • Director of the master’s program MSc in Innovations and Entrepreneurship of the UCU Business School
  • Co-founder of Yes&Design and Platformmedia companies.
  • Graduate of the “JSK Fellowship” program at Stanford University.
  • Consultant in the sphere of implementation of innovations and design thinking in business.
Academic Experience
  • With the beginning of the 2022 academic year, Oleksandr Akymenko headed the master’s program MSc in Innovations and Entrepreneurship of the UCU Business School. Prior to that he was a teacher at the UCU Business School; one of his courses was “Design Thinking in Business”. Publisher of an online magazine, worked as an editor and journalist until 2014.
  • Within the consulting company Yes&Design, Oleksandr Akymenko is engaged in mentoring, facilitating and conducting workshops on design thinking, on the generation of new ideas, and the efforts of various teams and companies to create competitive, simple, and innovative products in Ukraine.
  • Oleksandr was also one of the founders of The Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program project. This is a one-year educational program at Stanford University (California, USA) for Ukrainians involved in changes in Ukraine, which for 5 years hosted three professionals from the fields of reforms, law, economic development, and entrepreneurship.
  • In July 2016, he completed the “JSK Fellowship” program at Stanford University, where he studied strategic management, entrepreneurship, the basics of venture capital, media business, investment, design thinking, disruptive innovations, and the development of democracy.
  • From the beginning of 2012 to August 2013, he headed the investigative journalism department of the Ukrainian version of Forbes magazine. He specialized in exposing corruption of high-ranking state officials: i.e., tender, financial fraud, offshore schemes, smuggling, ownership transparency.
  • At different times of his career, he wrote materials for Thomson Reuters, Buzzfeed, Ukrainian Pravda, Dzerkalo Tyzhnya, Svidomo bureau, and Inter TV channel.