ZASTAVNA FOUNDER & SUPERVISORY BOARD CHAIR, BISU
OLGA
LEADING FROM THE FRONT
It has been four years since the full scale invasion of Ukraine and the doors of The British International School, Ukraine (BISU) remain open. A place where students not only survive but thrive under Olga’s inspiring leadership.
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My whole life has been connected with education, being around children and educators. I can’t imagine ever
doing anything else. An alternative does not even come to mind.” Olga started her long career in
education after graduating from the Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages in Ukraine. “I worked as a lab assistant,
then became a lecturer. It was a very prestigious job at that time. I was teaching Russian language to international students and English for beginners. I then started lecturing for seven years. I really enjoyed it and was very successful as a teacher. I was quite a young lecturer and had adult students from all over the world. I remember spending lots of time preparing for lectures to
bring students something new and informative and they were so appreciative. I was deeply involved in teaching and seeing the results really inspired me.”
NATURAL BORN EDUCATOR In 1994, Olga opened her first language school. At that time there was huge competition in Kyiv and she remembers it proudly. “I still remember my first team
there, because I managed to create such a wonderful and enthusiastic team of teachers. At that time I was a teacher, a secretary, running many heads of departments, and a director. Our Monarch Language Academy became extremely successful and we had a huge waiting list for students. We were young, enthusiastic, and very successful.”
As well as being an innovative
language school, it was the first-ever to introduce teaching English from beginners to upper intermediate levels in Ukraine. Busy making her mark as a bold
education leader, Olga later met with Nord Anglia founder, Kevin McNeany. “He had already opened a lot
of schools across Eastern Europe and was a pioneer, having started schools in Eastern Europe. At the time, he had schools in Moscow, Prague, Bratislava and Warsaw. Ukraine was on the agenda and so we met. We invited him to visit us. His career had started with a language school too, and in 1997 BISU in Kyiv was born.” You could say BISU has been
her life’s work, now in its 29th year. “It is such a creature. It’s a
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