Belarusian Female Founder on Leading a $30M Tech Business | Talks with Hanna

Luba Pashkovskaya — Co-Founder of VERV, a $30M annual-revenue company, and one of Forbes’ Top 50 Women in Tech.

In this episode, she opens up about how her leadership style transformed, why her company employs more women than men, how working with Yury Gursky and Viktor Prokopenya shaped her journey, and why she spent years suppressing her feminine energy – until she finally found balance.

We also dive into AI, the opportunities it’s creating for women leaders in tech, and the story behind the Women Leadership Club, which Luba founded after male founders in Cyprus debated whether to add her to their “men-only” chat.

Podcast "Talks with Hanna" — a space where we meet women leaders in IT who’ve built their careers and companies across borders, navigated challenges, started over, and to shape their own paths in tech.
We talk about AI, Business and Leadership.

⏱️ Key Topics:
0:00 I’ve never worked under a female leader
1:18 Who Luba Pashkovskaya is today: Leader, Mentor, Founder, Investor
2:39 Identity, a 103-year-old grandmother, and pride in one’s roots
4:36 How Verv was born: three Co-Founders
9:41 From first employee to department head in two years
12:30 Working with Viktar Prokopenya & Yury Gursky
14:58 The dilemma: stay, emigrate, or launch something new
15:53 Why 2013 was the perfect moment to build a company
17:44 Pregnancy & launching a startup in the same month
19:50 Leadership & masculine energyx
25:14 Fears, stereotypes, and societal pressure on women’s salaries and careers in IT
27:25 Women’s roles in teams
36:40 Why women’s clubs matter
51:28 How AI and emerging tech influence careers and entrepreneurship.

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Women in Tech: https://www.wintech.me/blog

Luba Pashkovskaya
LinkedIn:   / liubovpashkovskaya  
Instagram:   / lubapa  

Content & Production Producer: Aliaksandra Savinich
  / aleksandra-savinich  
Go-To-Market Producer: Polina Molchanova
  / pmolchanova  

This season is created within the Women in Tech project together with the Center for Gender Studies at EHU, and funded by the European Union.
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