Hi, I’m Olena.
I make brands that earn their keep.
For 20+ years I’ve built brands, campaigns, and visual work that moves real numbers — the last 12 of them leading the work, not just making it. First for magazines in Ukraine, then for eight years as the founder of my own apparel label, and now as Creative Director at the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation in Washington. I’ve been a business owner, an art director, a photographer, a marketer, a fundraiser, and the person who runs the whole email program. I’m Ukrainian, I work in three languages, I build with AI in a hands-on way, and I like problems that come with a budget attached.
How I got here
I didn’t come up through agencies. I came up making things.
In Kryvyi Rih I started in magazines, laying out pages and selling ad space. Then I did the reckless thing and started my own company, Colibri Sportswear, a fitness apparel brand. For eight years I designed it and I ran it: the patterns, the seamstresses, the website, the ads, the CRM, the shipping, the customers who wrote at midnight. Nobody handed me a brief. I learned that a beautiful thing that doesn’t sell is just an expensive hobby, and that lesson never left me.
Then COVID changed my field dramatically. Sports competitions, classes, and gyms closed their doors, and my clients no longer needed apparel or stage costumes. It was tough. We made it through, but I burned out looking for work to keep my employees busy and paid. I realized that this chapter of my life had come to an end. So I sold my business, giving it a new life with new owners, and found myself in media.
I enjoyed the new work: Enterprise Creative Manager at Expert-KR, our local news agency. I adapted quickly, producing live news broadcasts, video stories, and original photography and graphics across digital platforms. I ran our social media, found topics worth turning into projects (and won awards for a couple of them), and even did some marketing: bringing in clients and running their content from scratch through production. I loved that job.
Then the war took all of it.
I had to relocate, and I chose the US — the land of opportunity. For a while I kept working with my newsroom from here as a volunteer, not for pay: creating content, translating, writing. I wanted to stay useful, and to show the support Americans were giving Ukraine. I kept it up as long as it made sense, but the time difference and being out of the daily context made it harder and harder, and I had to put my focus on building a career here.
I rebuilt in Washington, DC. Today I run the whole brand and communications operation at the Foundation: one person, directing a rotating crew of freelancers, so a small nonprofit looks like an institution. On the side I’m CMO of Sweetanok, a foundation that rebuilds what the war broke back home. Design is how I keep fighting for my country from an ocean away.
I’m a designer with a finance degree. Strange combination, and my favorite thing about myself. But it helps me think bigger: what the flyer is actually for, what the email campaign has to move, whether the UX of the donation page is easy and motivating enough to finish. I can make the thing, and I can tell you what it did for the business. I don’t do art for art’s sake. I make brands that earn their keep.
What that looks like in numbers
At the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation (2022-current)
- +100% social audience in two years
- 400+ email campaigns: +35% open, +25% click-through
- 60+ events and webinars produced
- +40% engagement from video and motion
- Run by directing a 4–10 person freelance roster
At Expert-KR News Agency (2021-2022)
- 87 projects produced
- 63 of them live broadcasts
- 2 awards for social media projects in my first six months
- News, social, investigations and client content — all produced in house
At Colibri Sportswear (2013-2021)
- $400 in starting capital, built into a brand that shipped worldwide
- 8 years running it end to end: design, production, sales, e-commerce, customer care
- 14 countries shipped to, with orders going out across Ukraine every day
- 6 tailors and seamstresses in house, plus a bench of contracted vendors
- ~$3K a month in owner benefit by the end — approximately $2K in owner compensation plus ~$1K in profit kept in the business
- ~$6K in stock, materials and equipment handed over at exit
- ~$75K estimated value at exit — a deliberately conservative estimate
- Built on a master’s in finance, which is why I read every project as a business
Sold direct and through distributors in studios across Ukraine and abroad. Every model could be customized, because we made it ourselves — costumes worn by circus and acrobatic professionals, including performers from Cirque du Soleil and acrobats competing at the World Championship in junior duet and trio.
Selected work
Sweetanok
Brand, website, and the fundraising story that made a two-front mission fundable from an ocean away.
How I work
Design has to pay for itself
I judge my work by what it does for the business: growth, conversions, dollars raised. If it doesn’t move a number, it’s decoration.
My finance degree helps me think bigger: what the flyer is actually for, what the email campaign has to move, whether the UX of the donation page is easy and motivating enough to finish. I can make the thing, and I can tell you what it did for the business. I don’t do art for art’s sake. I make brands that earn their keep.
One person, full stack
Brand, campaigns, email, events, video, the website. I’ve run all of it solo, and brought in freelancers when the work needed more hands. Small teams are where I do my best work.
I build with AI
I use Claude and its agentic tools, Claude Code and Cowork, to do what used to need a developer: integrations, Mailchimp, Webflow, hand-coded HTML. I draft with AI, then build and polish by hand. One person moving like five.
Let’s talk
I’m open to Creative Director, Brand, and Marketing & Communications roles at nonprofit, mission-driven, and growing organizations. If that sounds like you, say hello.
