Infotrust tech firm founder supports homeland
The founders of a Blue Ash-based tech firm, who are both from Ukraine, are exploring an innovative way to help those in the war-torn country: Help them find jobs.
Alex Yastrebenetsky, who co-founded Infotrust with Michael Loban in 2010, told The Enquirer that Ukraine is home to about 200,000 tech workers and a huge segment of their business has dried up.
“One of the ways to support them is to give them jobs so they can pay their bills. The war is in one part of the country, but the whole region is disrupted, the whole country is disrupted right now,” Yastrebenetsky said.
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His business focuses on e-commerce and online advertising, which have both been impacted by the war in Ukraine.
Blue Ash technology firm supports Ukraine with donations, remote jobs
He said in many parts of Ukraine, especially those in the eastern regions of the country, the economy is operating only on cash alone. Google has suspended advertising in Russia. Shipping items in the region is next to impossible.
Yastrebenetsky said many Ukrainian e-commerce and advertising companies were doing business with Russian companies because their markets were so much larger than Ukraine’s market.
This means a lot of people aren’t sure where their next paycheck is coming from, but Yastrebenetsky said in the days of the internet and remote work, people with the right skills can work from anywhere for clients all over the world.
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“We’re not in the staffing business at all. We’re just trying to figure out how people can find jobs or contracts while the dust settles and they can figure out if they still have a full-time job.”
In addition to these efforts, which he says other companies should join, the Infotrust Foundation, the company’s non-profit philanthropic venture, has donated to a church in Warsaw, Poland to support their work taking in refugees.
The foundation has also partnered with a competitor, a company that also happens to have Ukrainian leaders, to support employees for companies there in Ukraine that are part of the Google Marketing Platform, which Infotrust is a part of as well.
Ukraine-Russia war is personal to Infotrust leaders, employees
For Yastrebenetsky and several of his employees, the war is personal. Until last weekend, both of his parents were trapped in Kharkiv, Cincinnati’s sister city and Yastrebenetsky’s hometown. He said in recent years they visited Cincinnati frequently, but they traveled home before the invasion.
“My parents are in the literal center of Kharkiv, within two blocks from the Freedom Square that got bombs a few days ago,” he said. “The city is mostly surrounded because it’s the second-largest city and its closest to the Russian border. So it’s difficult to get out there.”
Communication has been difficult, so he’s not even completely clear how they managed to get out of the city.
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Infotrust also has five Ukrainian employees based in the US and Canada. Yastrebenetsky said one employee had to get her family out of Ukraine in February, another employee’s father fighting on the frontlines, and yet another has been working unsuccessfully to get their entire family out of Kyiv.
At home, the news is hard for Yastrebenetsky to explain to his children.
“My wife is from Russia,” he said. “My son, he’s absolutely shocked. And he’s asking, ‘So who are the bad guys?’ I can’t say it’s the Russian people because it’s not the Russian people. My wife is from Moscow. I have family on both sides. “
‘… If people feel like they want to help, find a way to do it’
He said this is a similar story for hundreds of thousands in Ukraine, a country that part of the Soviet Union with Russia for more than half a century. Decades of mandatory relocations moved people all over Russia and Eastern Europe. The ties between families and friends are still strong, Yastrebenetsky explained.
Lately, it’s been hard to work, he said. He said his father is 87. When World War II broke out, he was only seven and was forced to flee Ukraine to Siberia. As a Jewish family, Yastrebenetsky said they lost many people in the war.
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“Basically, he has to go through the same experience now for the second time,” he said.
Their home, which Yastrebenetsky grew up in, is on the second floor of a five-story building. He said after the invasion they had to board up the windows, partially with wood from the dining room table. They also kept their bathtub filled with water as a reserve just in case it stopped running.
The owner of a small shop on the ground level of the building had turned the basement into a little bomb shelter, he said.
“Whenever they hear the sirens they run for the bomb shelter,” he said.
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He doesn’t know what the future holds, and Putin’s motives and tactics are unexplainable. He just knows that people in Ukraine need help, and there is no shortage of non-profits and avenues to make donations to support people there.
“My mentor once shared this saying, ‘There is no they,'” he said. “‘They’ are going to help. ‘They’ are going to do something. There is no ‘they,’ So, if people feel like they want to help, find a way to do it.”
