Nataliya Kalmykova, executive director of the Ukrainian Veterans Foundation, became the first employee after the institution was registered at the beginning of February. At the end of 2021, Nataliya won a public and open competition and now heads the UVF, which belongs to the sphere of administration of the Ministry of Veterans.
Nataliya has experience working with the Ukrainian military, understanding their needs, development, and motivation. She also has business experience and management skills. She knows how to unite a team, attract highly qualified specialists – both from the state sector and from the public sector – to effectively solve tasks.
While in the position of the head of the military department of the Come Back Alive Foundation, Nataliya offered to create an opportunity for training officers-commanders of units. The program in cooperation with the UCU (Ukrainian Catholic University)Centre for Leadership started in April 2019 – and now leadership and management training in the military is a constant and methodical process. More than 500 officers received certificates of completion of training.
As the operational director of Ukraine’s largest army aid Foundation, Nataliya managed to build a systematic and structured team work, establish internal processes and bring the Foundation to a qualitatively new systemic level of internal process organization in six months.
From June 2021 until her appointment to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Nataliya was an adviser on gender issues to the Commander of the Ground Forces, the largest branch of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. During her tenure in this position, she initiated processes for the introduction of gender approaches that are already in place in the armies of NATO member states. In particular, she became the ideological inspiration and organiser of the first public event on gender integration in the Armed Forces – “Army built on trust”.
She researched organisational culture in the Ukrainian army, is the author of publications on this issue, co-organiser of thematic conferences devoted to the phenomenon of organisational culture and its influence on the effectiveness of the organisation, for the Armed Forces, etc.
These examples are only a part of the visible and invisible processes in which Nataliya contributed to the national stability of Ukraine.
With such experience and knowledge, Nataliya Kalmykova will lead the team of a new institution for Ukraine. And among the priority tasks is the selection and coordination of the team and the launch of the selection of applications for financial assistance for veteran projects.
