Maryna Tirshu: A talented female leader making waves in the tech industry

As the Head of the Benelux Market and the Head of Strategy at Infopulse, Maryna is instrumental in driving the integration of the Infopulse family into the Create family. She has an impressive track record, having grown the communications platform company BICS from 0 to 14M in customers. Additionally, she established the Telco business from scratch, expanding it to a team of hundreds with a diverse customer portfolio. Maryna's exceptional skills were also evident in her role in building business continuity activities during the russian war in Ukraine.

We asked Maryna some questions to get to know her better. A lady of many hats, she is a fitting example of how we need diverse backgrounds in tech. Maryna is not an engineer; in fact, she has an academic background in Romano-Germanic Philology and Economics. But she became interested in tech within the company she joined after graduation.

– We have a local saying that 'appetite comes when you eat,' and it was a bit of my story. I never intentionally decided to go into technology, but when I started, I couldn't stop anymore. Keeping in mind that I had zero experience in tech companies and zero work experience in general, I was quite motivated to learn fast. Probably, the fact that I was thrown right into such a high-tech environment with a quite wide degree of independence impacted my future way of thinking: 'Yes, you can’.

Maryna says the best thing about her current role is her team; a diverse group of people who share values and spend a lot of time together even outside of work not because they must but because they want to.

– Having such people around gives you comfort and absolute trust that you can achieve anything. I aim to demonstrate to our customers that we are the ones they can rely on for decades. It brings a lot of satisfaction and meaning to what I do. I am also so thrilled to collaborate with all Create colleagues in our super-international environment – Ukraine, Brazil, USA, Austria, Czechia, and Poland, I could continue endlessly, but... it is such a luxury to have no borders in collaboration," she says.

Maryna doesn't think she has experienced many difficulties in her career not being part of the majority group in the tech industry, i.e., not being a man.

– Not really, I was so focused on the fact that I don't have an engineering background, that being a woman was not my number one problem. Later, I realized that practical experience and healthy self-esteem are much more powerful than thinking about biases like 'one should have an education in engineering to work in tech' or 'men are more skilled than women in tech.' These are just limitations we set in our own heads, thus, the first thing to do is to get rid of them."

There is so much we can do to improve gender equality in tech, Maryna says and explains it further.

– Before taking over the role of Benelux head, I led the Telecom business unit at Infopulse with around 350 people. And guess what? 52% of leadership roles in this business unit were held by women. I believe it was because of female role models around: it creates more comfort for women to grow in tech environments when they see real examples of women's leadership close to them.

Women should not let the world around them impact their choices. Maryna thinks her biggest insight into life so far is that there is nothing more beautiful than authenticity.

– My biggest life lesson is that it's totally fine to be yourself, exactly the way you are. From early childhood, we are told what we should and should not do by our parents, and then later by society. But it is important to stick to your own values and build the life you want – not the life someone else expects you to have. Never let anyone, including yourself, put your dreams down. If it is tech that interests you, jump onboard to the tech world and have fun!

When asked about her biggest personal role model, Maryna says the war in Ukraine has forever changed the way she sees this.

– Since February 2022 when the war started in my country, I do not have any specific role models anymore. Each day I see fantastic examples of human dignity, free spirit, and will of steel from ordinary people. People who are giving up their lives to make sure we all have our 'tomorrow.' All those people are my collective role model.