Yevgeniya Yezhenkova: From Corporate Events to Race Tracks
Yevgeniya Yezhenkova is our Event Specialist based in Ukraine. Being a part of Employer Branding and People & Culture teams, she is the one who makes our corporate parties happen and carefully chooses, creates, and brands corporate gifts for Ukrainian colleagues.
She’s been with Avenga for 4 years, and outside of work, she helps organize car races across the country — something she’s been around since childhood.
For Yevgeniya, motorsport was always part of her life from the very beginning.
My dad was involved in organizing races and worked with the Automobile Federation of Ukraine, so I grew up around it. Drivers, judges, organizers — that was my normal environment. By the age of 14, I was already helping on-site: small operational tasks, assisting judges, and learning how events actually work behind the scenes. I didn't realize it back then, but I was basically learning event management from the inside.
When asked about her favorite memory, Yevheniia immediately thinks about Crimea and the annual rally competitions held in Yalta. “We woke up at 5 am and traveled to Yalta from Lviv with my parents. It wasn't just a competition — it was almost a full week of living inside the event. Those events had a very special atmosphere that many people still miss today. For me, it had everything I loved: mountains, the sea, and motorsport.”
Inside Ukrainian motorsport
Today, Yevgeniya and her team organize various competitions, from amateur events like slalom and gymkhana, where anyone with a car and curiosity can participate, to professional hill climbs on mountain roads.
Before the full-scale invasion, motorsport in Ukraine followed a more established structure, with professional rally championships, permanent routes, and experienced teams traveling across the country. But like many industries, the full-scale invasion changed everything. Some athletes went to defend Ukraine, some left the country, or had to step away from the sport. Events were paused, and the community had to rethink how to continue.
Eventually, the team restarted with smaller-scale events, focusing mainly on hill climb races in the Carpathians. These races require at least a 5% elevation difference between the start and finish and regularly take place on public mountain roads that are closed for the duration of the competition. But even smaller events require a huge organizational effort.
Right now, I do a bit of everything. Communication with participants, social media, regulations, and coordination on-site. Even one event requires months of preparation: permits, coordination with local authorities, safety services, timing schedules, participant communication, and countless backup plans. And all of this is handled by a relatively small team — around 15 people, most of whom have full-time jobs outside motorsport."
In her role in motorsport and at Avenga, Yevgeniya handles a mix of responsibilities. Motorsport taught her how to stay calm when things suddenly go wrong. "You can plan everything perfectly, and still something breaks an hour before the start. There's no option to panic — you just solve it. So motorsport teaches me how to be flexible and stay calm in unpredictable situations," she says.
That ability to adapt quickly is something she brings to her work at Avenga, and it works both ways.
Motorsport taught me how to work in chaos — Avenga taught me how to structure it. Now I think more systematically, especially when it comes to planning and communication. I also started bringing more branding thinking from my work into motorsport projects.
Despite being completely different worlds, both roles share a common thread for Yevgeniya — bringing people together and making things happen.
