Torben Majgaard, a Danish citizen with a flair for business, was an important part of the Kyiv community. It was with sadness that we reported his Jan. 3 death in a Spanish hospital. The gifted entrepreneur in 2002 started Ciklum, an information technology company, and built it into one of the five top IT outsourcing powerhouses in Ukraine, with 2,500 employees and international reach in several nations.
Majgaard was also generous, investing in IT education, in the Kyiv Post’s IT fellowship program and many other noteworthy ventures, including the 2018 Ukraine House Davos. Majgaard spoke twice at the annual Kyiv Post Tiger Conference, always insightfully. He was gregarious and chance encounters with him were invariably pleasant. He also had a rich grasp of history and could talk intelligently for hours on many topics.
He did have his weaknesses, as most of us do. He drank too much alcohol for too long and it killed him, eroding his liver and kidneys. He died at 48, decades prematurely. The circumstances of his death do not define his life or diminish his accomplishments. But Ukraine is an easy place indulge in excess and justify it. The sobering reality of this tragedy should spur reflection about how we can be better persons — to ourselves and to each other, so that all of us can reach our potentials, with lives that are not only fulfilling, as Majgaard’s certainly was, but also long and healthy, as his was not.
