In a world where the rules change faster than plans, resilience no longer comes from resources alone. It comes from the connections between people. BrainGain.Expert grew out of that idea, and out of one specific problem we kept seeing from two sides.
One problem, two sides
The founder of a Ukrainian tech company refuses to lay off his people. Key employees have left the country or been mobilized. He has no budget to hire a strong chief operating or growth officer. Processes are slipping, and he makes every decision alone.
A services company has been running at negative EBITDA since the pandemic. Then the war came, and the defense sector began hiring away its best specialists at salaries a traditional business cannot match. There is no money left to innovate, to experiment, to change course or to bring in senior talent. The company is surviving, not growing.
These are not isolated cases. In June 2026, a record 71% of Ukrainian industrial firms named staff shortages as their main obstacle, according to a monthly survey by the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting.
The wider numbers tell the same story. Ukraine has around 213,000 open vacancies, according to the KSE Institute. Yet unemployment stands at about 15.5%, according to Info Sapiens. Some 5.76 million Ukrainian refugees live abroad, according to UNHCR, many of them skilled professionals deciding where to build their careers. The Ukrainian government expects a shortage of 4.5 million workers over the next decade.
Now look at the other side. On both sides of the Atlantic, experienced professionals struggle to find work that uses what they know. Unemployment in the EU stood at 6.1% in August 2026, according to Eurostat. Count everyone who wants more work than they have, including part-timers who want more hours and people ready to work but no longer searching, and the figure rises to 11% of the extended labor force. Those in work are often underused: in 2024, 21% of employed university graduates in the EU worked in jobs below their qualification level, according to Eurostat. Among citizens of countries outside the EU, the share was close to 40% in 2021.
The United States shows the same pattern. In September 2026, 7.1 million Americans were unemployed, and 1.9 million of them had been looking for work for more than six months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The next generation is not spared: 42% of recent college graduates work in jobs that do not require a degree, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Even graduates of the world's leading business schools feel the squeeze: at the top 15 schools, the share of graduates who accepted a job offer within three months fell by six percentage points in 2024, to 84%, according to The Economist.
The expertise exists. It just does not reach the businesses that need it.
Where the idea came from
We, the two founders of BrainGain.Expert, met in Berlin in the Global MBA program at ESMT Berlin. We both studied on BMW Group scholarships, which support women's leadership and the economic recovery of Ukraine. That purpose became a personal commitment for both of us.
Our backgrounds differ. Oksana Pashchenko is a business strategist and operator with more than 20 years of experience. Kateryna Nadtochii has spent 17 years in strategic communications and change management. But we both knew the same thing: money alone does not rebuild companies. People who know what to do with the money do.
We came to the problem from different directions. Oksana had spent years helping companies build the processes and teams that let them scale, and saw how often growth stalled not for lack of money but for lack of one experienced person in the right seat. Kateryna had led communications through transformations in Ukraine, Germany, the Netherlands and Central Asia, and saw that change succeeds only when the people inside the company own it.
Again and again, we saw the two sides of the same problem. Businesses could not find the expertise they needed. Strong professionals could not find where their experience was needed. The question framed itself: why do these two sides not meet, and what would it take for them to meet?
“I have always looked for a way to serve a community, for a purpose bigger than myself that can change many lives for the better. I know from my own experience how much self-realization and a motivating environment matter for people to feel fulfilled in their work.”
Oksana Pashchenko, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, BrainGain.Expert
Why now: resilience in a VUCA world
Strategists call the world we live in VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. A pandemic, a full-scale war in Europe, broken supply chains, artificial intelligence arriving in every office. These are tectonic shifts.
In such a world, five-year plans go stale within months. Resilience comes from networks of trust: people who are willing to share knowledge and practical expertise. Community and mutual support are no longer the soft side of development. They are its foundation.
Nor is money the binding constraint. In December 2024, the World Bank's International Development Association secured a record 100 billion US dollar financing package for 2025 to 2028, much of it intended for countries affected by fragility and conflict. The European Union launched a 6 billion euro Reform and Growth Facility for the Western Balkans, including Albania and Kosovo, for 2024 to 2027. And the World Bank projects that by 2030 nearly 60% of people living in extreme poverty will live in fragile and conflict-affected countries.
Money is flowing to Ukraine too, but today most of it goes to defense and targeted reconstruction: critical infrastructure, energy and housing.
What reaches small and medium businesses is mostly loans, guarantees and grants for equipment. Expertise inside the company is rarely funded, and then only in limited form. Almost no one pays for a qualified person inside the business who solves the problem and stays until the change takes hold. Funded expertise is the missing line item in the recovery budget. That is why we built BrainGain.Expert.
What we are building
BrainGain.Expert is a non-profit impact accelerator platform for businesses in fragile and recovering economies. The model fits in one sentence: the business brings the problem or need, Partners equip it with the right tools and resources, Fellows help build the solution and the capabilities to sustain it, and donors fund the Fellows' time until the business can carry the cost on its own.
Fellows are members of the BrainGain.Expert Fellowship, a global community of operators, senior professionals and academics who work from anywhere in the world.
Every engagement follows five steps:
- 1. Diagnosis. We start with a diagnosis, because the problem an owner names is rarely the real gap.
- 2. Matching. The platform proposes a shortlist of Fellows. The business interviews them and makes its own choice.
- 3. Advise and Solve. The Fellow analyzes the gap, proposes a solution and, where needed, builds a first working version.
- 4. Implement and Operate. If required, the Fellow joins the company part-time or full-time and implements the change with the team.
- 5. Growth. A business that completes the program and puts the change into practice can receive a grant.
Our first program, Program 01, starts in Ukraine. We describe how it works, step by step, in Recovery starts inside the company: Program 01 in Ukraine.
Our goal is not a report full of recommendations. It is a capability that stays in the company after the expert leaves: a process the team runs on its own, a role that is retained, a tool that is actually used. Hence our motto, Expertise is aid. Aid usually arrives as goods or money. The aid that lasts is knowledge inside the business.
Each engagement must leave at least one of five capabilities behind, and each has a test that shows it stayed:
- Skills: the team runs the task without the Fellow.
- Workflows: a written process with an internal owner.
- Tools: systems and AI tools still in daily use three months after handover.
- Operating rhythm: a monthly review held without the Fellow.
- Roles: a role retained at 6 and 12 months.
When a business in a fragile economy recovers, it keeps people employed, pays its suppliers and taxes, and holds on to the skills the country needs. When many companies do the same, employment, productivity and exports can recover. Experienced professionals in Europe and beyond, in turn, return to meaningful, paid work, strengthening their own economies and communities.
Our commitments
We hold ourselves to three commitments:
- 1. Measure what stays. We track roles retained at 6 and 12 months, and the capabilities the team runs without the expert.
- 2. Submit to independent evaluation. Our results are assessed by an outside party, not by us.
- 3. Publish the results. Once a year we release a report on the platform's aggregate results, including what did not work.
People need people
The expertise exists, and so do the businesses that need it. Our job is to make sure they meet, and to show, with evidence, that the change stays. Whether you bring expertise, run a business or fund the work, there is a place for you in it.