Vasyl Yatsura (Team)

Team
Vasyl Yatsura has been running a media start up in Ukraine since before I met him in 1992. He launched a very popular TV program (Студіо Гарт ТВ) at State Television before I met him. In 1992, he came on board with his entire team to launch the International Media Center. His focus was on the production company, the news program, then on creating the first national network of independent TV stations. It was called Unika-TV. He organized and ran training programs with Internews Network all over Ukraine. As the International Media Center evolved into what is today STB, and as as Internews matured into a stand-alone presence in Ukraine, Yatsura launched Teleradio Kurier. It is a pure business-to-business media company that published a regular journal for professionals, runs an annual trade show, festival, and publishes books. In the picture here, Yatsura is standing in his offices, in front of less than half of the covers that he has published. The journal is written for TV and radio professionals. Most of the revenue comes from ads and sponsorships. He hasn't been updating his site IMHO, but follow the link and you'll see the agenda for the 2009 festival. He built his business by personally meeting all the main players in regional and city TV stations throughout Ukraine. Initially, he sent them programming (that they desperately needed) by putting videocassettes on trains. Then he launched training programs and networking events. His trade show is the 'must-do' event of the year.

When I met with him in 2009, he said that there is a changing of the guard at the regional stations as they all become part of larger conglomerates. He doesn't know all the players in the market as he once did, since the market is growing. He sounded like a 20-year veteran entrepreneur: tough, tired, proud but wiped at the latest economic crisis. Just as things had started to stabilize for business in Ukraine, the global economic crisis crashed like a wave on his shore.
Vasyl runs his ongoing venture with a core team, and he constantly recruits and develops new staff. His former employees are now sprinkled throughout the media management of Ukraine. Vasyl is the consummate people-manager. (Precisely what much of Corporate America espouses to value, but in reality has a difficult time implementing.)Vasyl partners up with this wife, Lesia (second from right). His right hand man for years has been Andrij Dashko (far right). Zoryana Yatsura is embarking on her own independent career, now that she graduated from Kyiv Mohyla Academy, but she continues to help the business by especially around the busy trade-show seaason. Behind them in this picture is a wall full of pictures of the team with various media luminaries throughout the years.

Just above his computer is a dog-eared copy of picture with me from my Thank You (and Going away) Party in 1994. It was really nice to see that image up there.It serves as yet another link in the unconventional audit trail from foreign grants to support open society and the manifestation of that society. Yatsura's office on Haydar street and the dozens of people he has on payroll will not appear on an audit of the Soros grant that we got in 1992. The millions of dollars in value of deals that were transacted between vendors at exhibitors at this trade show will not show up on an audit of the US AID grant that we got to launch the International Media Center. However, that tradeshow wouldn't have come into being, that journal wouldn't be published, those journalists wouldn't have been trained if Yatsura stayed at State Television that winter night in 1992.

Yatsura always blurred the line between family and business. You could say that it was all business all the time with Yatsura, so family gets folded into the mix simply by definition. It is still like that. We had the old gang over to my parents apartment for dinner one night. Yatsura, his wife and daughter came as did Dashko, and Nechyporuk with his family (which includes a grandson). By chance, a friend of my parents was in town from the US. Yatsura spent much of the evening explaining the landscape of media business to this man. Yatsura continues to be always on. Luckily, he still plays very well with kids. In this picture, my two daughters and Nechyporuk's grandson bested Yatsura in a game. In this regard the trip was very personal as, I too blended the facets of personal and professional that I had intentionally kept so separate while in Corporate America.