Biography

I grew up in Crimea, Ukraine, in a picturesque city of Yalta where I attended the school with advanced learning of English language. I received my B.S. and M.S. degrees in management from the Crimean Institute of Nature protection and Resort Construction. My primary interests were marketing and tourism development. After graduation, I started my job at the Ministry of Health Resorts and Tourism of Crimea. I spend there twelve wonderful years on various positions including being the head of the department of international relations and image policies where I was responsible for marketing Crimea as a national resort and tourism center. I also served as a local expert for several USAID projects.

During this time, I went to graduate school in Odessa, Ukraine to earn an M.P.A. degree.

I was awarded Edmund S. Muskie fellowship and went to the United States to earn another M.P.A. degree from the University of Arkansas. After graduation, I returned to Ukraine and started working at the European Union Project “Crimean Tourism Diversification and Support” as a local hospitality and tourism expert.

In 2014, my home region, Crimea, was occupied by Russia. I lost my job as the international projects in Crimea were terminated. I stared working as a fixer (a person who arranges meetings and provides translations) for such media as NPR (USA), BFM-TV (France), and BBC (Great Britain).

In 2015, I moved to the U.S. again to start my Ph.D. journey. I attended West Virginia University where I worked with Drs. Laurel Cook, Emily Tanner, Paula Fitzgerald, and Michael Walsh (Dissertation Chair). My advisors were focused on research in public policy domain, and I inherited their passion to research with implications for public policy and consumer well-being.

I graduated with my Ph.D. in marketing in 2021 and joined Dominican University (Illinois) in the Fall of 2021 as an assistant professor of marketing and international business.

I am a mother of a wonderful son, Artem, who is a high schooler. He is interested in math and computer programming and wants to be a computer science guru (and he also gets credit for creating this website). We both like traveling and exploring new places.

I also like fashion and style, yoga, and reading books.