Valeriia Zabolotna, PhD

A former board member of the Lean Institute Ukraine, Valeriia brings a unique combination of extensive experience in founding and leading educational institutes and knowledge of lean thinking and practices to her role at LEI. As executive director of education, she leads the business strategy and curriculum development for the nonprofit’s educational products and services, including live and online courses, workshops, and new offerings.

With expertise in organizational psychology and innovative educational approaches, Valeriia has founded and led four leading-edge educational institutions, playing an integral role in curriculum development, staffing, funding, and operations. Her experience includes all stages of education as a teacher, owner, and leader, from children to adults, from a school to a corporate setting. In her work, she strives to help people at every level develop and reach their potential and assist companies in innovating opportunities for attaining breakthrough goals and financial success amid rapid change.

Before joining LEI, she served as president of two corporate universities for the biggest companies in their sector in two countries. At an energy company’s Academy, Valeriia established an open educational platform to attract adults, as external students, from the entire Ukrainian corporate sector and from abroad, which improved the financial performance and profile of the Corporate Academy. She also reorganized the team working on an alternative Lifelong Learning methodology in response to the rapidly changing environment.  

At a bank, in addition to overseeing educational programs for the organization’s 300,000 employees, she enhanced the Corporate University’s stature and visibility by arranging international accreditation from the Global Council of Corporate Universities and The European Foundation for Management Development and extended international relationships with Stanford, Berkeley, Insead, and other top universities.   

Previously, she founded two schools featuring new educational models. The first, Bionic Hill Development Partners in Kyiv, Ukraine, offered free integrated training in tech skills, soft skills, and entrepreneurship. Leading partners included Cisco, Hewlett Packard, and UC Berkeley Centre for Executive Education. In founding the second, a UNIT Factory (E’cole 42 franchise), she introduced an alternative education model, pioneered in France, for software developers.

Additionally, she launched Kyiv State National (Taras Shevchenko) University’s master’s program in Organizational Psychology, designing the curriculum and arranging international cooperation for faculty members.

Valeriia earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Ethics and a master’s degree in Psychology from Kiev State National (Taras Shevchenko) University. Also, she holds a Master of Business Administration in Electronic Commerce from the University of New Brunswick, Saint John, NB.