Nataliya Boyko: Activist gives up career in Germany to develop energy sector in Ukraine

Name: Nataliya Boyko

Age: 28

Education: European law: Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Humboldt University of Berlin.

Profession: Deputy Minister of Energy and Coal Industry of Ukraine

Did you know? Before entering university, Boyko was one of Ukraine’s top junior karate competitors, winning the European Championship in 2011.

Nataliya Boyko has risen to the top quickly. In January, the 28-year-old was appointed deputy energy and coal industry minister. She had already worked for the National Reforms Council as a support manager and as an adviser at the Presidential Administration.

Boyko started her university studies early also, in 2006, at the age of 17. For the next five years, until 2011, she studied European law at Ivan Franko National University in Lviv. She had one advantage that later shaped her future: She spoke both German and English. Three years into her studies at university, she won an internship in Austria — while there, she met a professor who worked on ecology and energy law.

The professor made a huge impression on Boyko. “I came back home knowing that what I wanted to do in the future was energy law,” she told the Kyiv Post.

After graduating in Ukraine, she won an Erasmus internship and went to study at Humboldt University of Berlin. To have enough money to buy textbooks in Germany, she had to combine her study at university with working as a night manager at a hotel.

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After she graduated, she received an offer to work at consulting company ERM (Environmental Resources Management) in Frankfurt am Main, which she gladly accepted. A couple of years later, in 2013, she was invited to work in the Kyiv office of oil and gas company Royal Dutch Shell.

“I came to Kyiv on the third day of the EuroMaidan Revolution for a job interview,” she said. She got the job and moved back to Ukraine.

“I didn’t understand the rules Ukraine lives by,” Boyko said. “I only knew how to live according to straightforward German ways.”

The revolution in Ukraine, which drove President Viktor Yanukovych from power, changed Boyko’s outlook. “I understood that the country was fighting for something important.”
She would work at Shell by day, and join protesters by night.

When her contract with Shell ended, she had to return to Germany, but she still desperately wanted to be in Ukraine. “For that I was ready to give up the stability I had in Germany,” she said.

She gave up her contract in Germany and started to send out CVs to Ukrainian companies. For a while, she had no success. But in December 2014 she sent her resume to deputy head of the Presidential Administration, Dmytro Shymkiv, and was invited to work at the Presidential Administration, first as a support manager for the National Reforms Council, and then as an adviser.

Within two years, she was appointed deputy energy and coal industry minister.