Organization members

Tomas Fiala is the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Dragon Capital. Before initiating the creation of Dragon Capital in 2000, he worked at Bayerische Vereinsbank in Prague, while continuing studies at the Prague University of Economics, and at Wood & Co., a leading regional investment bank.

Tomas has served as elected President of the European Business Association (EBA) in 2010-2015 and in 2016-2021, leading Ukraine’s top business organization currently comprising over 1,000 companies with more than a million employees.

In 2015, Tomas co-founded and became Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Centre for Economic Strategy, an independent economic policy think tank. In 2016-2020, Tomas was elected to the Board of Transparency International Ukraine, part of a leading global anti-corruption watchdog. In October 2020, Tomas was elected to the Board of Directors of the Kyiv School of Economics.

Ivan Mikloš is the former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of the Slovak Republic (2002-2006, 2010-2012), Deputy Prime Minister for Economy (1998-2002), and Minister of Privatization (1991-1992). He has co-founded and led the economic think tank MESA10 (1992-1998). Between 2006-2010 and 2012-2016, he was a Member of Parliament. In 2014, he was reappointed as the President of MESA10 and became a Member of the International Advisory Board of the National Reform Council of Ukraine and the platform VoxUkraine.

During 2015-2016, he served as a Chief Advisor to the Minister of Finance of Ukraine and as an Advisor to the Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine. Since April 2016 until August 2019, he served as a Chief Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister of Ukraine. After the change of the government, from November 2019 until March 2020, he was in position of an Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister of Ukraine. In years 2016-2020, he chaired the Strategic Advisory Group for Support of Ukrainian Reforms (SAGSUR).

He is also a Co-Founder of the Ukrainian economic think tank Centre for Economic Strategy. Since August 2021, he has been a member of the Strategic Council for the Implementation of the Slovak Recovery and Resilience Plan led by the Prime Minister. In November 2021, he became an Advisor to the Prime Minister of Moldova.

Ivan Mikloš was one of the leading figures of economic transformation in the Slovak Republic. He significantly contributed to the entry of the Slovak Republic into the OECD and instigated an extensive and effective tax reform. He led the government agenda on economic restructuring and fiscal consolidation.

The second Dzurinda´s government (2002-2006) gained a very reformist reputation thanks to severe austerity measures and a comprehensive program of structural reforms (tax, social sector, pension, healthcare, public finance, labour market) backed by Ivan Mikloš.

Thanks to these reforms, Slovakia was able to join the Eurozone in 2009. In 2004, he was awarded “Best Minister of Finance of the Year” by Euromoney, and “Top Business Reformer” by the World Bank´s Doing Business report.

Ivan Mikloš is the author of “Book of Reforms” (2005), “Rewriting the Rule” (2001) and dozens of studies and articles in the expert and popular press. He is also the author of the chapter about Slovak reforms in the book “The Great Rebirth: Lessons from the Victory of Capitalism over Communism” (2014).

In 2019, under his leadership SAGSUR published the book about the Ukrainian reform process “Reforms in Ukraine after Revolution of Dignity: What was done, why not more and what to do next” (2019), to which he contributed the chapter “Political Economy of Reforms: Political system, governance and corruption”.

Andriy Boitsun, an expert on corporate governance of state-owned enterprises and privatization, Strategic Advisory Group for Support of Reforms (SAGSUR).

He is responsible for providing recommendations to the government on corporate governance reform of state-owned enterprises and privatization. In 2016-2018, he was an independent member of the Appointments Committee, which is responsible for selecting CEOs and supervisory board members of state-owned enterprises of particular importance to the economy.

Prior to that, he worked as a research director at the Centre for Economic Strategy. He was an advisor to the Chairman of the Board of Naftogaz of Ukraine, developed the concept of corporate governance reform at Naftogaz, and, together with the EBRD and Baker McKenzie, developed the Corporate Governance Action Plan for Naftogaz.

He has over 15 years of experience in research and policy analysis. He worked as an assistant and then as a visiting professor and senior researcher at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), where he conducted corporate governance research and taught management courses.

Prior to that, he graduated with honours from the Institute of International Relations of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv with a Degree in International Economic Relations.

Dmytro Romanovych has 12 years of experience in the investment banking and financial sector.

He is currently a Deputy Director at KPMG in Ukraine. Dmytro specializes in projects related to advising the Government and projects funded by donor organizations.

Previously, he worked as a Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine, where he was in charge of small and medium-sized businesses, deregulation, and intellectual property rights protection.

He holds a Master’s degree in Economic Cybernetics from Kharkiv State University of Economics. He also studied at Stanford University as part of the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program.

Pavlo Illiashenko has 15 years of experience in financial and economic analysis. During these years, Pavlo has been mainly involved in capital markets analysis and asset management, rising from an analyst to the Director of Research and Asset Management at one of the leading investment banks in Ukraine.

In 2014-2015, Pavlo worked as a Senior Economic Strategist at AYA Capital (including co-authoring the Economic Reform Strategy), and was part of an international team of consultants working on gas market reform in Ukraine.

From 2010 to 2016, he was a member of the Index Committee of the Ukrainian Stock Exchange.

Since January 2017, Pavlo has been a lecturer at the School of Business and Governance at Tallinn University of Technology, where he teaches a number of finance courses, including aspects of behavioural economics.

Since August 2018, he has been a member of the Centre for Economic Strategy NGO. Pavel is also an advisor to the Centre for Economic Strategy.

Olga Balytska is the Head of Real Estate and Infrastructure Practice at PwC, attorney at law, and Advisor to the Mayor of Kyiv on city development. Olga is a well-known expert lawyer (with significant successful practical experience in project implementation and management) in the field of land relations, real estate and construction, development of engineering, transport and social infrastructure.

She has more than 20 years of experience in leading international and Ukrainian companies and has supported the implementation of large investment projects on a regional and national scale.
In addition, Olga heads the City Development Office – a non-governmental organization aimed at implementing effective reforms in local government to develop direct democracy and ensure effective decentralization through a complete reboot of the local self-government structures.

Olga has been repeatedly elected as the Chairman of the Real Estate Committee of the European Business Association. In addition, Olga heads the EBA ad hoc committee on the land market. The team of attorneys led by Olga won a case in the European Court of Human Rights challenging the unlawfulness of the “moratorium” on the sale of agricultural land.

In 2002, while serving as a deputy of the Kyiv City Council (2015-2020), Olga initiated structural reforms at the local and national levels in the following areas: regulation of land relations, construction, ensuring the rights of people with limited abilities, reforming parking space, de-shadowing of property relations, renovation of outdated housing stock, etc.

Olga is also the author of a unique reform of equity participation in the city of Kyiv. This particular reform resulted in Ukraine’s rise by 105 positions in the Doing Business ranking in the category “Obtaining Construction Permits” and a 4-point increase in the overall ranking.

Olena Bilan has over 15 years of experience in macroeconomic analysis and forecasting. Olena joined Dragon Capital in 2006 as an economist and bond market analyst.

Since 2009, she has held the position of Chief Economist at the company and has been responsible for analyzing the development of the Ukrainian economy, developing macroeconomic forecasts and assessing the situation on the debt and foreign exchange markets.

According to the Thomson Reuters Extel Survey of international investors, Olena is among the top three analysts in the Ukrainian financial market.

Since 2016, she has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), and in 2020, she was elected Co-Chair of the KSE Board of Directors. She is a member of the Supervisory Boards of VoxUkraine and the Center for Economic Strategy.

Prior to joining Dragon Capital, Olena worked for several years at the IEIPC research centre and SigmaBleyzer investment fund.

In 2002, Olena received a Master’s degree in Economics under the EERC international program at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (now Kyiv School of Economics) and a degree in Computer Science from the National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”.

Roman Sulzhyk has over 20 years of professional experience in international capital markets. In 2019-2023, he was an independent member of Privat Bank’s Board of Directors. In 2015-2016, he chaired the Supervisory Board of the National Depository of Ukraine. Since April 2012, he has been Managing Director for Risk at Moscow Exchange.

From 2008 to 2011, he was Director of Derivatives Trading at Deutsche Bank in Moscow.

From 2000 to 2008, he worked at JP Morgan Chase in New York and London as a Vice President. He participated in the creation of the risk management system and was involved in derivatives trading. From 1995 to 2000, he worked in the IT departments of a number of technology companies in New York.

Roman holds an MBA degree from the New York University Stern School of Business and graduated from Leeds University, Computer Science & Mathematics.

Daria Mykhailyshyna is a PhD student in Economics at the University of Bologna. Prior to that, Daria worked as an economist at the Centre for Economic Strategy, where she was engaged in research on human capital development. In addition, Daria has conducted research on populism, Russian economic presence in Ukraine, etc.

Daria holds a Master’s degree in Economic Policy from University College London and a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, with a specialization in Economics from the University of Warwick.