Ms Valentyna Piontkovska

Valentyna leads the development of Ukraine’s national cross-sectoral Youth Development System, supported by the Partnership for a Strong Ukraine Foundation. She serves as a technical adviser on the social foundations of national competitiveness, holistic child and youth development, soft power, and complex social systems modelling. She is a co-author of the analytical paper Youth development: an evidence-based approach.

Her career spans over a decade of leadership across Ukraine’s public, civil society, and international development sectors. At Kyiv-Mohyla Business School, she served as Director of Programs and Deputy Head of the Strategic Office, where she designed and led partnership ecosystems involving international organisations, donors, embassies, government officials, business, and civil society — and co-organised a strategic military-diplomatic game with nine partner embassies and Ukraine’s security and defence institutions. At Crown Agents Ukraine, she managed multi-donor projects in health, education, and social protection (FCDO, UBS, DEC, HelpAge International, Pfizer), building a humanitarian NGO ecosystem of 42 organisations. At the National Institute for Strategic Studies, she headed the Strategic Partnerships Department, managing diplomatic relations with the Office of the President, the Verkhovna Rada, the Cabinet of Ministers, and international think tanks including CSIS, RAND, and GCSP. At Mohyla Strategy Agency, she earlier developed business ecosystem methodologies for the transformation of state institutions, NGOs, and businesses.

Her expertise spans soft power, national competitiveness, security and defence sector reform, social cohesion, and strategic partnership development across government, international donor, and civil society environments.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​