Ukrainian woman appointed as head of Ubisoft’s Ukrainian studios for the first time
Ubisoft has announced the appointment of Ukrainian Olha Sendziuk as the head of Ubisoft Kyiv and Ubisoft Odesa studios.
This is the first time that Ukrainian Ubi studios, which were established in 2008 and 2018 respectively, will be run by a citizen of Ukraine, as previously this position was held by managers transferred from Ubisoft’s foreign divisions.
In addition, it should be noted that despite the balanced distribution of women and men in leadership roles at Ubisoft, it is a very rare case, both at Ubi and in the industry as a whole, when a woman holds a position of this level.
Olha Sendziuk graduated from Donetsk National University (2005) with a degree in economics and Kyiv National Economic University (2013) with a degree in law, and is currently pursuing an MBA at Kyiv Mohyla Business School.
After working for more than 14 years in consulting at the renowned Ernst & Young (now EY), Olha joined Ubisoft in 2021 as the Finance and Administrative Director of Ukrainian studios. Since then, she has been instrumental in ensuring the continuity of Ubisoft’s operations in Ukraine, especially since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. She succeeded Managing Director Jean-Philippe Piéchot, who decided to step down after 2.5 years of managing the studios.
“I am honored to take on the role of head of our studios in Kyiv and Odesa,” said Olga. “I have been immensely inspired by the resilience of our Ukrainian teams over the past two years and look forward to working with them and continuing to build the future of our studios.”
Currently, Ubisoft Kyiv and Ubisoft Odesa studios employ about 800 people (as of May 2022, this figure was 1120 employees according to data from gamedev.DOU.ua). Ubisoft Kyiv and Ubisoft Odesa are involved in the development of almost all major Ubisoft projects, and their latest work is Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which was released a week ago. The next release of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is scheduled for December 7, 2023.
We wish Olha every success in her new position and hope that Ukrainian Ubisoft studios will finally be able to get their own big project, such as Assassin’s Creed Sich. In addition, we hope that the appointment of a Ukrainian woman to such an important position will help to finally get Ukrainian localization in future Ubisoft games.