But when Coles went to Ukraine for the first time earlier this year \u2013 crossing the border from Poland and then traveling about 40 miles to the western city of Lviv \u2013 it was more than the coffee that defied his expectations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there is still a stereotype on the American side that you find more cold personalities in Eastern Europe,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s completely wrong. I found people in Ukraine to be very fun, very funny, and very warm. And so, my first impression was: Whoa! Once again, I\u2019m going to a region of the world I\u2019ve never been to, and my priors about the place were inaccurate in major ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Coles found in Lviv, which is known as one of the main cultural centers of Ukraine, was a city that he says felt a lot like San Francisco, but with 1,000 more years of history \u2013 amazing architecture, great food, incredible nightlife, and some exceptional coffee.<\/p>\n
\u201cI fell in love really quickly,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
While Coles and his two companions on the trip \u2013 Peter Goggins \u201921 (CAHNR) \u201923 MEGE and Massyl Mallem \u201923 (ENG) \u2013 were in Lviv, daily life for the city\u2019s inhabitants often times seemed relatively normal. People were shopping, eating at restaurants, and going out at night. Children were also attending school, and couples were getting married.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the one hand you\u2019re thinking, this feels so normal,\u201d says Coles. \u201cBut then you had moments where you went, oh, wait, this is not a normal period of time. And you would remember that you were in an active war zone, because you\u2019d see sandbags stacked around buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Or military vehicles and armed soldiers in uniform would make their way down a city street.<\/p>\n
Or a siren would go off in the middle of the night announcing a missile launch or a drone attack, and the team would make their way to a basement until given an all-clear.<\/p>\n
Or they would have to leave a bar by 11:45 p.m., in order to make sure they didn\u2019t break the city\u2019s midnight curfew.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d be talking to someone, and ask them a simple question like, \u2018Where are your mom and dad from?\u2019\u201d says Coles. \u201cAnd they\u2019d respond, \u2018Oh, my dad died last year in the war.\u2019 Immediately you are reminded that there\u2019s something catastrophic happening right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Life hasn\u2019t been normal in Lviv since before February 2022 when Russian military forces invaded Ukraine, marking a severe escalation of conflict that had been ebbing and flowing since 2014.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Lviv, you can sometimes forget that there\u2019s a war going on, but never for more than a little while,\u201d says Goggins. \u201cIt\u2019s so far from the frontline, but at the same time, there are those very real, gritty reminders.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, Coles, Goggins, and Mallem sipped on coffee one morning in late May in a small caf\u00e9 in Lviv with new friends made at Ukrainian Catholic University<\/a>, connected through a unique initiative called the Ukrainian Global University<\/a>.<\/p>\n Just a few weeks later in early July, those new friends sent photos of the same coffee shop with its windows blown out by a barrage of Russian missiles that targeted Lviv during the night.<\/p>\n Only days after the missile attack, those destroyed windows were boarded over, and the same coffee shop was once again open for business \u2013 a defiant resilience in the face of ongoing and unwanted war.<\/p>\n That resilience is indicative of why Coles, Goggins, and Mallem had traveled to Ukraine in the first place: to help Ukrainian entrepreneurs, facing both the typical and decidedly unique challenges of figuring out how to maintain and even grow a business in a time of extreme uncertainty and while under threat of violence.<\/p>\n Connections<\/strong><\/p>\n Part of what Arminda Kamphausen does every day as the director of global and sustainability initiatives<\/a> for the UConn School of Business is make connections.<\/p>\n \u201cI am like the hub, where all the spokes kind of go in and out,\u201d she says, and late last year, a new spoke joined Kamphausen\u2019s ever-growing hub.<\/p>\n \u201cGlobal Partnerships<\/a> came to me, along with CISS<\/a>,\u201d she says, \u201cand they were in discussions with what’s called the Ukrainian Global University, which is a consortium of institutions in Ukraine. And one of the folks who was having these conversations for Ukrainian Global University was Oleksandr.\u201d<\/p>\n Ukrainian Global University<\/a> was launched by a group of Ukrainian educational institutions and organizations in March 2022, during the first weeks of the Russian invasion, with the goal of identifying talented Ukrainian individuals and providing them with support for projects that will ultimately help the country to rebuild and overcome the impact of war. The initiative has partnered with 20 educational institutions around the globe to date \u2013 including UConn \u2013 to help support its goals.<\/p>\n Ukrainian Catholic University<\/a> is a member of the Ukrainian Global University consortium \u2013 Oleksandr Akymenko directs the masters\u2019 of science in innovation and entrepreneurship program at Ukrainian Catholic University\u2019s Business School in Lviv.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have these 25 bright students who are entrepreneurs,\u201d Akymenko explains, \u201cand we\u2019re helping them to succeed in their business, in their life, by inviting amazing professors to them and running them through all of these topics that really are required to every business to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n As that hub of all things business and global, Kamphausen follows the work that Coles does as the chief scientist of Daigle Labs<\/a>, a startup research and development lab born out of a desire to use organization science research to spur tech entrepreneurship in Connecticut and to facilitate environmentally sustainable business growth around the world.<\/p>\n As Coles works overseas in places like South America, Jordan<\/a> and the Middle East, and Nepal<\/a>, Kamphausen says she sometimes finds herself living vicariously through him, asking him about his latest trip and hearing stories of his team\u2019s travels, tribulations, research, and accomplishments.<\/p>\n \u201cThe energy is high, the enthusiasm is unshakable \u2013 you always want to talk to Ryan when you have a new idea, because he gets right into it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s design thinking in action. Then he is going to take good research out into the world and make it better. But also, in the process of using the research, collect more data to bring back for continuing analysis.”<\/p>\n When Kamphausen spoke with Akymenko about his program, and about the possibility of collaborating with faculty in UConn\u2019s School of Business, she immediately thought of Coles and made the connection.<\/p>\n \u201cShe introduced us to Professor Ryan Coles for the first time, and she told me that he has this research interest in entrepreneurship in countries with very harsh environments, during or after periods of conflict, in times of terrorism,\u201d Akymenko says. \u201cAnd we have this masters\u2019 program in which we are looking for professors all the time, called innovation and entrepreneurship, which I lead. I invited him to run a class with my students.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOleksandr and I met, and right away I said, \u2018I\u2019m there,\u2019\u201d says Coles. \u201cOleksandr mentioned that he\u2019s trying to get faculty from different universities in the U.S. to work with his students, and I said that I\u2019d do it, and also that I wanted to be there in-person.\u201d<\/p>\n When Coles asked Mallem and Goggins \u2013 both recent UConn alumni and young entrepreneurs who are part of his team at Daigle Labs<\/a> \u2013 to join him, they both agreed to the call without hesitation.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Ryan told me that he was going to Ukraine, I was like, yes,\u201d says Mallem, who works as a development associate and translator for Daigle Labs. \u201cRyan, I will follow you to the end of the Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n Collaboration<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cPeople usually say \u2018we care about you,\u2019 or \u2018we are with you,\u2019\u201d says Akymenko. \u201cBut to be with you physically, to arrive to Lviv train station, this means a lot for our students. And Ryan was among the professors who eagerly agreed to come and support us in-person.\u201d<\/p>\n For Coles, it wasn\u2019t a question of if he would make the journey to Lviv, just a question of when. Mallem, Goggins, and Coles were already planning to be in the Middle East in May for fieldwork \u2013 so they flew into Krakow, and then made their way to Lviv after they had already been working in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries.<\/p>\n Coles wasn\u2019t traveling as an official representative of UConn \u2013 the trio\u2019s travel wasn\u2019t funded through the University. But as with all of the countries he\u2019s officially and unofficially worked in, Coles brought with him a research-backed program designed to support the environmentally sustainable growth of small- and medium-sized enterprises, particularly those operating in extreme contexts.<\/p>\n \u201cNinety-five to 99% of businesses around the world fall under this category of small- and medium-sized business,\u201d Coles says. \u201cOne of the lab team\u2019s major research accomplishments is that we\u2019ve conducted large-scale randomized experiments with tens of thousands of businesses to test what type of management techniques maximize business revenue and profitability for these small- and medium-sized business while at the same time reducing their carbon footprint per capita.\u201d<\/p>\n For Coles, bringing Goggins and Mallem with him was essential. Both are recent UConn alumni who launched their own ventures as undergraduates and who immersed themselves in UConn\u2019s entrepreneurial ecosystem \u2013 including taking part in the numerous accelerator, training, pitching, and fellowship programs offered through UConn\u2019s Connecticut Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, or CCEI<\/a> and mentoring and venture support opportunities from the Peter J. Werth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation<\/a> \u2013 to support them on their entrepreneurial journey.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was important to bring Peter and Massyl with me, because I think students want to also be able to interact with other founders,\u201d Coles says.<\/p>\n \u201cBeen there, done that \u2013 I can save you from making the mistakes I\u2019ve spent the last couple years of my life doing,\u201d says Goggins, who in addition to running his own venture<\/a>, works as director of the Startup Foundry in Daigle Labs. \u201cWe thought our participation was going to be the most important thing. We have some of startup knowledge and experience that we are happy to bring and disseminate.\u201d<\/p>\n The core of their visit to Ukraine was conducting a three-day workshop with Akymenko\u2019s graduate students at the Business School that focused on startup internationalization and resilience in times of uncertainty.<\/p>\n \u201cIt used to be \u2013if you go back 10, 13 years \u2013 the way you became a multinational company was you started a small business,\u201d says Coles. \u201cYou sold in your local market, then you grew your business to sell in a regional market, then you grew to become a national company, and over time, your business matured into a multinational company.<\/p>\n \u201cIn today\u2019s more globally connected world, succeeding as a startup often means you need to have multinational operations on day one. And developing international operations as a scrappy startup is a unique entrepreneurial skill developed through global studies and global experiences. Bringing innovative technology to market through entrepreneurship successfully is not just a function of engineering and business expertise, it is also a function of global expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n Coles, Goggins, and Mallem presented a series of workshops to the Ukrainian students, but they also sat down individually with each person, learning about them and their business, offering strategic guidance or advice, and teaching them techniques to identify markets where they might find success.<\/p>\n They also spent time talking about stress, burnout, and the very real toll that starting a business can take on a founder\u2019s mental health in even the best of times, let alone during a war.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the biggest issue they\u2019re facing is with raising capital, raising investment, and finding customers,\u201d says Mallem. \u201cIt\u2019s all the same struggles that entrepreneurs face in raising a business \u2013 working with people and having to wear like 15 different hats. You don\u2019t have one profession as an entrepreneur. It is fifteen different professions mushed into one. And for them, it\u2019s all the same problems, except the problems are on steroids and human growth hormones, because of the different complications that the war adds.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a unique, practice-based approach that appealed to both Akymenko and his students, many of whom had never before thought about the possibility of taking their business into markets outside of Ukraine.<\/p>\n The workshop and the personalized approach, though, opened their minds and doors to the possibility thinking about their own entrepreneurship on very different scale.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never seen a professor who was so attentive,\u201d Akymenko says. \u201cHe was super personal with each of the students. He was eager to know about every single business they do. And I had never seen this before. You know, usually professors go to the crowd of people and teach this class in general terms. But he was eager to know what you<\/em> are doing and how I can help you.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Commitment<\/strong><\/p>\n Every single life in Ukraine has changed since Russia invaded their country, Akymenko says.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are a university, and we can feel it,\u201d he says. \u201cSome of our students, some of our employees, professors, went to become soldiers. Some of them were already killed in this war, and this, as you can imagine, influenced us a lot. And we kind of processed this anger and this grief into making an even better institution.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to conducting the workshop while in Lviv, Coles gave a charitable speech to about 40 in-person participants as well as hundreds of online participants about developing and preserving companies during periods of terrorism and war. The lecture can still be found online,<\/span>\u00a0and proceeds from the event went toward a scholarship fund in honor of Oleh Vorobyov<\/a>, a student at Ukrainian Catholic University killed on the front lines of the war in May 2022.<\/p>\n \u201cThat scholarship fund supports veterans returning from war, in terms of their education,\u201d says Coles. \u201cWhen Oleksandr and I talked about the speech, we thought about my unique background and research with businesses operating in violent contexts, and we settled on the idea of \u2018organizing for resilience\u2019. Which means, a speech addressing the issue of how do I, as a business owner, reorganize my business so that my employees and I can successfully weather wartime?\u201d<\/p>\n Coles\u2019s on-the-ground experience and research in countries dealing with violence has found that it\u2019s important to focus on short-term operational planning, rather than long-term vision planning, and also to organize a strong hierarchical structure, which offers a sense of security to employees and nimbleness around decision-making in times of instability.<\/p>\n Founders, managers, and their employees also need ongoing support \u2013 something Coles and his team are prepared to offer.<\/p>\n \u201cDaigle Labs, and now the entire University, are doubling down heavily on working with Ukrainian companies and helping the Ukrainian people. Forging these close partnerships is key to seeing that through,\u201d says Goggins. \u201cThis war is going to end \u2013 and it will end in victory for Ukraine, I\u2019m certain of it. But that\u2019s not the end of the road. There\u2019s rebuilding.\u201d<\/p>\n That continued support includes working with individual Ukrainian startups through Daigle Lab\u2019s STEM Startup Foundry<\/a> as well as establishing an SME development program with business coaching services out of Ukrainian Catholic University.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are already putting together proposals, raising funds, collaborating with USAID, reaching out to financial institutions, and coordinating with the business school to get that moving,\u201d says Coles, \u201cbecause we think it\u2019ll be important in terms of post-war reconstruction efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, before Coles and his team had even traveled to Ukraine, UConn and Ukrainian Catholic University had entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) thanks to the forward-thinking leadership of UConn\u2019s Vice President for Global Affairs Daniel Weiner and the UConn Global Affairs Office<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Goggins](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/IMG_6797_UCT-300x200.jpg\")
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![\"Massyl](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/Massyl-Teaching_UCT-300x200.jpg\")
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