Tonya Bulgakova joins The Change Agent Podcast to talk about Ukrainian refugee leadership, tracing her path from a small city in central Ukraine to leading an NGO team in Brussels made up entirely of expats. She fled the war with two kids, picked up English on the job, and built a management role from nothing.

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Tonya grew up in a small city in central Ukraine and left home at 15. She worked her way through a call center job, then five years with the Ukrainian prime minister's office, before starting her own business, which she ran until the war forced her to leave the country. She fled to Belgium with her two kids and had to rebuild almost everything at once, starting with a language she barely spoke. She landed at an international NGO that supports youth career readiness, on a team where every single colleague, including her, was an expat. Three national languages in one country, and none of them her native Ukrainian. Leading as a Ukrainian refugee in that setting meant learning to read people first and translate second, a skill she says took years to build.

The turning point wasn't a promotion. It came from watching how differently Ukrainians and their Spanish and Brazilian colleagues handle a simple email reply, and realizing her own directness had a reason behind it. That kind of self awareness, paired with a habit of asking for more responsibility instead of waiting for it, is what eventually earned her a management role that didn't exist before her in the organization. She talks candidly about what she had to give up to get there, and what she's only now getting back.

00:00 Introduction
05:06 Finding a role model in her sister
10:29 Culture shock inside an all expat team
16:11 Asking her way into a management role
21:16 Trading a business for team responsibility
26:50 Freedom to reshape her team culture
33:35 Advice for leading across languages

Tonya Bulgakova LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonya-bulgakova/

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Bohdan Konotop runs front line logistics for a Ukrainian Army brigade, keeping drones, Starlink terminals, and soldiers supplied under Russian fire. In this Change Agent Podcast interview, he walks through the daily grind of getting gear from depots to combat zones and what breaks down fastest under pressure.

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Konotop started as a soldier in Donetsk in 2023, made sergeant, then earned his commission. He talks about what it actually takes to lead and how a unit only moves as fast as its slowest link. The conversation turns technical fast: drones burn through batteries, antennas, and charging stations almost as quickly as they arrive, and losing a single Starlink terminal can knock out an entire position's connectivity. Konotop breaks down why keeping that front line supply chain moving matters as much as any weapon in the fight, and why the hardest resource to replace isn't equipment. It's trained people.

The conversation shifts toward where this war is heading: autonomous vehicles pulling wounded soldiers out of battle, machine-gun-mounted drones, and strike ranges that have grown from 15 kilometers to over 2,000 in three years. Konotop lays out a blunt case for a standalone European defense alliance built around Ukraine's combat-tested technology, and explains why he thinks the response to Russian drone incursions into NATO airspace matters now! His closing message to Europe and the US is direct, and worth hearing in full.

00:00 Introduction
01:07 A day in the life of frontline logistics
04:19 Drones, Starlink, and what burns out fastest
09:33 From soldier to officer, leading a unit
17:48 The truth about NATO training abroad
22:41 Scaling from a platoon to battalion logistics
28:30 Autonomous drones and where the war is heading
37:19 A message to Europe about lasting support

Bohdan Konotop LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bohdan-konotop-540011424/
Bohdan Konotop Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bogdankonotop

Bohdan's Email to Support the Ukrainian Armed Forces: [email protected]

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Nathalie Timtchenko builds mental health support for Ukraine, reaching 25,000 people through 500 trained providers since the 2022 invasion. In this episode she explains why expressive arts therapy reaches trauma that words can't, and why funding quality over quantity is a fight worth having.

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Nathalie trained as a clinical mental health counselor with a specialization in expressive arts therapy, then earned a master's in public administration at Harvard Kennedy School, where she co-chaired the Ukrainian caucus. When Russia invaded in February 2022, she sent one email to every network she'd ever been part of and built a database that now holds nearly a thousand international volunteers. She talks through what it takes to close a gap where Ukraine has roughly one psychologist per 100,000 people, why First Aid of the Soul trains teachers and community workers instead of just clinicians, and how psychological support across Ukraine has to bend around a war that hasn't ended.

The conversation turns hardest around a colleague's image of a fire burning on the first floor of a building whose second floor is already beautifully furnished, his metaphor for veteran reintegration programs being built while active duty defenders are still fighting. Nathalie also names the funding gap in Ukraine's mental health response directly: quantity gets rewarded, quality doesn't, and a suicide hotline just went dark when USAID funding ended. With psychological distress reportedly touching 80 percent of Ukraine's population, what she says success actually looks like will stay with you.

00:00 Introduction
05:59 Founding First Aid of the Soul in 2022
11:51 Closing Ukraine's Mental Health Provider Gap
17:51 Training Helpers Who Are Also Surviving the War
28:47 Reaching Active Duty Defenders Proactively
38:05 The Funding Gap Behind Ukraine's Mental Health Crisis
45:10 When It Feels Like It's Not Enough
52:34 Life Is Still Winning in Ukraine

Nathalie Timtchenko LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathalie-robelot-timtchenko/
Nathalie Timtchenko Website: https://www.firstaidofthesoul.org/

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Dr. Roman Sheremeta, the behavioral economist on Ukraine's National Recovery Council, joins The Change Agent Podcast on rebuilding a country's economy while the war is still being fought. He chairs economics at Case Western Reserve University, ran American University Kyiv through the invasion's opening weeks, and studies the game theory behind Russia's nuclear threats.

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Sheremeta's path started with chess. Playing semi-professionally as a kid in Ukraine sparked a curiosity about strategic decision making that grew into a career in game theory and behavioral economics. He won the Smith Budding Genius Award, was named a top economist by Forbes, and made the 40 Under 40 list from Poets and Quants. Those credentials got Ukrainian officials calling, first under Poroshenko, later onto Zelensky's advisory board once the war began.

In late 2021, he and his wife left a tenured life in Cleveland to open American University Kyiv, which opened its doors in February 2022. Three weeks later, Kyiv was bombed. He talks about a faculty member trapped in Sumy with two disabled parents and no way out, and a live TV interview hours before the invasion where he argued Russia would never attack. As a behavioral economist studying overconfidence and self-confirmation bias, he fell for both himself.

The talk then turns to the front lines, where he delivered aid near Kherson, sat in a command center shelled soon after his visit, and lost three friends to the war, one later named a Hero of Ukraine. He talks about going from a bunker to a lecture hall in the same week, why it left him both harsher and more compassionate, and breaks down Russia's nuclear game theory and what his research found about the one message that gets civilians to evacuate a war zone.

00:00 Introduction

06:21 The pull to return home to Ukraine

14:32 Missed signals before the full-scale invasion

23:42 Delivering aid to soldiers on the front line

30:55 How war experience reshaped his teaching

39:37 Where Ukraine's recovery council falls short

45:20 The nudge that actually saved evacuees

51:02 Funding oversight and rebuilding without corruption

Dr. Roman Sheremeta's LinkedIn

Dr. Sheremeta's Profile at Case Western

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Roni Millard survived executive burnout and breast cancer to build a career on psychological safety and executive wellness. Once one of Australia's Top 50 CMOs, a diagnosis at 44 forced her to rebuild everything she believed about success, and she joins host Eric Adams to break down what it actually takes to lead without burning out.

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Roni was CMO at Equifax and Cuscal when her body was already sending warning signs for nearly a decade: anemia, high cholesterol from processed food eaten at her desk, fertility struggles, and a bone fracture at 39 that revealed osteoporosis usually seen decades later. None of it stopped her, until cancer did.

She and Eric talk about treating that diagnosis as something that happened for her rather than to her, the Everlab research showing executives carry worse biomarkers than the people they manage, and how she now tells whether a company's wellbeing program is real or just cover for a lawsuit.

Her forthcoming book, Invincible, comes straight out of that reckoning, and she closes with a two column exercise anyone can use to spot what is draining their energy and what is giving it back.

00:00 Introduction
06:42 A decade of ignored warning signs
13:03 Why the diagnosis happened for her
18:04 The executive biomarker research
25:06 How high pressure cultures punish self care
50:35 A two column exercise to reclaim your energy

Roni Millard LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roni-millard/
Roni Millard Website: https://thewellbeing-edge.com/

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Artem Mazur, founder of Kids of Ukraine, talks with Eric about children's mental health support in wartime Ukraine, from a bomb shelter idea in the first weeks of the full scale invasion to a nationwide network of trauma care centers four years later. On episode 35, Artem explains what it takes to keep that work funded and effective when the crisis has no clear end date. If this one hits home, subscribing and leaving a review helps the show reach people who need it.

Artem walks Eric through the earliest days of Kids of Ukraine, when a group of business partners in a bomb shelter began organizing humanitarian convoys into Lviv. That effort became the Sviti program, now running in four cities and offering trauma informed care, art therapy, and counseling to children carrying the weight of war. He explains why the organization treats mothers as central to a child's recovery, not an afterthought. A therapy and photography initiative called Talk to Me Body helps women who have spent years in survival mode remember who they are outside of it.

The centers stay small by design. Artem explains why healing does not scale the way people assume, and how his team tracks recovery through questionnaires taken at intake and every six months. Kids of Ukraine is now partnering with Georgetown University on a multi year study of what works for children living through a full scale war, data few organizations anywhere have.

Artem describes bringing children to meet veterans there and watching them connect without hesitation, something adults rarely manage as easily. It says more about Ukraine's civil society than any statistic could.

00:00 Introduction
05:44 How the program helps mothers heal
10:52 Why healing works best in small groups
16:24 Partnering with Georgetown to measure impact
22:18 Bringing wounded veterans and children together
27:41 Scaling support for veterans and their kids
33:58 Preventing burnout among the care teams
40:15 Funding as the biggest barrier to growth
46:06 Healing through nature in the Carpathians
52:39 How to support a child for $21

Please support Kids of Ukraine.

Kids of Ukraine Website: https://kidsofua.org/

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Amber French-Griette leads the Organization for Nonviolent Movements in France and has spent more than a decade studying how ordinary people defend freedom without weapons. In this episode she breaks down the discipline behind that work, what over 420 documented nonviolent tactics look like in practice, and why Ukraine's civilian resistance is not a footnote to its military campaign but a second channel of power operating alongside it. She talks through the inaugural issue of the journal Across Fault Lines, published in partnership with Columbia University Press, which makes the case that Europe is leaving real power on the table by not understanding what Ukraine's civic shield is actually doing. The conversation also goes into what leadership feels like eight months into building an organization at the edge of a conflict, working across defense circles where these ideas are still far from mainstream. Hit play if you want a different frame for understanding what is happening in Ukraine.

00:00 Introduction

00:55 How the war in Ukraine reshaped ONM's work

02:34 Defining strategic nonviolent conflict and unarmed civilian defense

05:21 Ukraine's civilian resistance beyond the battlefield

10:16 The 420 documented tactics and how they function

17:25 Preserving Ukrainian cultural heritage as frontline defense

21:14 Across Fault Lines: the inaugural journal and its arguments

28:23 Oleksandra Matviichuk and the human dimension of the war

33:23 Partnering with the countering violent extremism world

47:01 Leading an early-stage organization with a large mission

54:52 How ONM measures impact and what success looks like

Amber French-Griette LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amber-french-griette

Amber French-Griette at ICNC: https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/contributor/amber-french/

Organization for Nonviolent Movements: https://nonviolent-movements.org/

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The Emile Foundation works two cases: 48 infants from the Kherson orphanage and children with disabilities from the Oleshky boarding school, all with living relatives waiting, in many cases without a word, for years. Finding one child can take two months or several years. The Russians are the only ones who can authorise a release. Every country, every institution failed these children. One recent peace proposal offered armistice with no accountability for war crimes. Treating oil access as a higher priority than stolen children is not diplomacy. Childhood has an expiry date. That lands differently once you have heard a mother describe finding a single memory, a ballet lesson her daughter half-remembered, to convince a child she was her mother.

00:00 Introduction

05:10 From volunteer to full-time: the moment Mariam chose this life

10:00 What it costs to walk away from security for a cause

15:30 The scale of Russia's child deportation operation

20:45 How the crime extended to teachers, nurses, and businesses

25:00 The Emile Foundation's two pilot cases and the return process

30:00 What families go through while they wait

36:00 The international community: an honest assessment

42:30 Peace deals, accountability, and why armistice without justice fails victims

48:30 The Seven Women Seven Lives campaign and the mothers still waiting

54:30 Why return and justice must run in parallel

57:00 How Mariam stays in it

Mariam Lambert LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariam-lambert-43527a3a/ Emile Foundation Website: https://emilefoundation.org/

Our Stuff

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Wani Iris Manly is an attorney, keynote speaker, and strategic advisor who left a successful law career in Miami to start over in Paris with no contacts, no plan, and no certainty about what came next. In this episode, she explains why most organizations misread resistance as a process problem when it is actually a fear of identity loss, and what leaders should do about it. She walks through her six-part Change Blueprint framework, shares the self-destructive pattern she sees most often in high achievers, and argues that change is a skillset to be built rather than an event to manage. Her closing message is one she developed on the streets of Paris when she had nothing but the decision she had made: success is inevitable, but only if you stop making failure an option. If you are leading people through uncertainty right now, this one is worth your time.

Wani Iris Manly Strategic Advisory: https://wanimanly.com/strategic-advisory/ Wani Iris Manly LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wani-iris-manly-esq-44510a5a/

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Dr. Kevin Mays returns to The Change Agent Podcast for a third conversation, and this one gets uncomfortably honest. The episode explores why capable leaders crack under pressure, why authority becomes a trap, and what the inner work of real leadership actually demands. Dr. Mays draws on his new book, Upgrade Your Leadership, to explain the neuroscience behind reactive behavior and the practices that can change it.

If this conversation makes you think differently about how you show up as a leader, subscribing and leaving a review helps the show reach more people who need it.

The conversation opens with a question Dr. Mays keeps encountering: why do high performers fail the moment they have to lead people? Their identity is built around being right. That attachment blocks curiosity, breeds reactivity, and creates a blind spot no framework fixes. He introduces the robot brain and the caveman brain to explain how neural programming formed in early childhood gets reactivated under pressure decades later, producing the anger and defensiveness that leaders mistake for strength.

Disengagement in an organization is a mirror. If people are checked out and the person at the top is pointing fingers, they are looking in the wrong direction. The fear that building capable, independent people makes you redundant is just the old scripting running the show again.

The episode closes with the one discipline everything else depends on: presence. Two minutes of focused breathing, done consistently, rewires the circuitry. That is where the upgrade begins

00:00 Introduction and context
05:30 Self-awareness as the prerequisite for leadership 10:07 The genius brain and the caveman brain explained 17:44 Pressure exposes what frameworks cannot fix
22:13 Emotional regulation as a daily practice, not a moment skill
29:00 Why authority produces diminishing returns
33:15 The fear behind failing to develop other leaders
38:00 Executive presence and the practice of presence 46:07 Control masquerading as responsibility
52:00 Planting seeds and the inside job of leadership

Dr. Kevin Mays Website: https://www.upgradeyourleadership.com Dr. Kevin Mays Website: https://maysleadership.com/ Dr. Kevin Mays LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kevin-mays

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