One of the world’s top economists, Ukraine-born Bohdan Hawrylyshyn died in Kyiv on the morning of Oct. 24 – just five days after celebrating his 90th’ birthday.
Hawrylyshyn leaves his wife, three children and seven grandchildren.
For the past 50 years, Hawrylyshyn had been a global citizen living in Geneva, Switzerland and Kyiv. But he always kept Ukraine in his heart.
“It’s not just a territory,” he said in an interview with the Kyiv Post on Jan. 27. “Whatever I did, I did as a Ukrainian, not only as Hawrylyshyn.”
Hawrylyshyn formerly served as an economy adviser to Ukraine’s first President Leonid Kravchuk and several Ukrainian prime ministers.
His professional career, however, started in Canada, where he moved from Ukraine after World War II. There, he found a job as a lumberjack before entering the University of Toronto and becoming the first refugee to enroll in a college in Canada.
Hawrylyshyn was a founder of the European Management Forum in Davos (now World Economic Forum) and worked as a consultant to General Electric, IBM, Unilever, and Phillips.
His energy and stamina always came in handy. In his book “Staying Ukrainian,” published in 2011, Hawrylyshyn wrote how he started daily practicing English while in Canada which helped him enter the University of Toronto. In 1954, he got MA in engineering with the same university.
From 1960, Hawrylyshyn taught economics-related subjects at the International Institute for Management Development in Geneva until becoming its director in 1968. Over his career, he had produced hundreds of scientific papers on management, managerial education, economics, and politics.
In 1988, he helped start the International Management Institute, the first business school in Ukraine. A year later, Hawrylyshyn initiated the establishment of the Renaissance (Vidrodzhennya) international charity organization, which has been funded by a famous U.S. philanthropist and billionaire George Soros.
In his 2013 interview with the Kyiv Post, Hawrylyshyn said that Ukraine “needs total transformation” and it’s going to be a challenge for the younger generation.
“Many young people want to improve the situation in Ukraine, but they don’t know where to start,” he said then.
To join the cause, Hawrylyshyn launched his Charitable Foundation in 2009. Its main goal was sending young Ukrainians on study trips abroad.
The students, he explained, were free to create a group with at least one lawyer, economist and ecologist – and then study one of the countries for one year (it could be Austria, Germany, Norway, Sweden or Switzerland). Over the years, the foundation has helped more than 500 Ukrainians to thrive in their future workplaces – many of whom landed in business, government, journalism, and various think tanks, according to the foundation.
“The most important task for them was to see what makes these countries so effective. After analyzing how these countries work these groups should go into the local councils to implement their knowledge there. And in some years they will be able to go to the parliament with this critical mass,” Hawrylyshyn said during the interview with the Kyiv Post.
Oleksandra Brovko, one of those who benefited from the program in 2012, said it’s still hard to believe that Hawrylyshyn was dead.
“Last week the whole Ukraine celebrated his 90th anniversary and today Ukrainians all over the world are grieving this loss. He will live in our hearts as a kind, cheerful and sincere person, whose lessons are embedded in the memory of the young Ukrainians who had the privilege to know him,” said Brovko, who is now working as trade expert with Canada-Ukraine Trade and Investment Support project.
“I still remember my first meeting with him in Geneva. We sat around the table, drank tea with rose jam, kindly cooked by his amazing wife Leonida Petrivna, and discussed the future of Ukraine,” she said. “He was inspiring and sincere in his beliefs, he encouraged me to return to Ukraine and work for the benefit of my country. I still remember that cozy evening as if it was yesterday.”
One of Havrylyshyn famous quotes says: “Everything I’ve done I started with a dream.”
