Svitlana Doroshchuk was born and raised in Lutsk. She left school for Lesya Ukrainka Volyn State University, where she took a degree in History.
After graduating she took maternity leave, and on returning to work began her career in education. She started out as a laboratory assistant, moved on to become a methodologist, and eventually headed one of the university's branches. She taught the history of Ukraine alongside this, and wrote a dissertation.
But teaching was never where her real interest lay. The organisational side appealed to her far more — setting up processes, handling documents, curricula, orders and staffing matters. That grounding made the eventual move into human resources a natural one.
In 2013 Svitlana joined the HR function of one of the gas station networks. She was initially responsible for HR support across the network‘s sites in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and later covered the Odesa, Mykolaiv, Zakarpattia and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, handling hiring and dismissals, HR orders, timesheets and other staffing processes.
She then moved to head office, where her remit widened considerably, taking in the group‘s various divisions, its oil depots, business travel and a range of other HR processes. She spent ten years with the company in all.
In 2023 Svitlana relocated from Lutsk to Kyiv and joined Ukrnafta as a senior specialist at the Kyiv Regional Network Management Office, working with gas station staff in the Zhytomyr and Chernihiv regions. She later interviewed for a post in the central HR department and moved across.
Her work now spans virtually the whole of an employee‘s time with the company — from onboarding through to personnel changes, leave, certificates and whatever else comes up along the way.
It is that variety she likes most.
“You can plan your day out, and then someone walks in or a new task lands — and the whole plan changes. There‘s no doing the same thing day after day here,” she says.
Employees, she notes, often come to HR with more than paperwork. They want advice on leave, insurance, blood donation or maternity leave, or simply do not know how to handle a particular situation at work.
“I always say HR knows everything. Whatever the situation, people will still come and ask,” she says.
The team matters to her too. Svitlana values being able to talk things through with colleagues, to support one another and to work out a solution together when something out of the ordinary comes up.
“You set off for work and you want to be there, because you know the people around you are good company and will help if you need it,” she says.
Away from the office, Svitlana reads and travels. The mountains have been a particular draw of late — she hikes, and camps out on the trail. She also works out regularly and runs, taking part in Ukrnafta‘s races, usually over five kilometres.
