Nick grew up in a family of professional artists in the city of Kiev, which at the time was part of the Communist USSR. He studied and practiced graphic design early in his career before moving his focus to user interface design and engineering.
He co-founded S&F in 2006 with his partner, Irina, and has a wealth of experience delivering value to clients in multiple industries such as large, high-traffic web portals, online retail, education and entertainment. Over the last few years, Nick has poured his focus into creating the most collaborative experience possible for clients alongside prioritising state-of-the-art software development.
He’s part of several developmental communities, such as Integral Life, Deliberately Developmental Practitioner’s Network, and Carol Sanford’s CAD, and he’s focused on evolving Speed & Function’s culture so that it becomes a Deliberately Developmental Organization®. He believes in the power of transparency and reflection, meditation and of course, good strong coffee.

Irina’s interest in information design was initially sparked by her experiences of creating presentations for scientific conferences. She made the shift to web development in 2003, leading a team of designers, engineers, copywriters, and front-end developers in an e-commerce environment. Three years later, she co-founded Speed & Function with Nick Gluzdov.
In recent years, Irina has turned her attention to taking a developmental approach. She gets to apply a scientific approach to her roles by doing experiments to further her own development and growth. She has led multiple Developmental Sprints® within S&F and also trained as a Sprint Leader with Minds at Work, a Robert Kegan company.
She’s incredibly inspired about seeing developmental approaches being brought to the younger generation, teaching the leaders of the future that they can change themselves and can help others change.

His skills lie in two key areas: first, creating environments where products, projects and even entire startups can flourish both technically and in the market; and second, supporting people to adapt products and change direction easily in order to meet the users’ needs.
Alongside this, he loves being at the leading edge of innovation and is passionate about finding ways to dramatically increase a startup’s chances of success. He firmly believes that alongside a solid idea, what influences a product or business’s level of success is how flexible, adaptable and able to pivot you are.
Peter has travelled much of Europe on two wheels, including through Germany, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro and Hungary. Unsurprisingly, having the mind of an engineer led him to set up a side business selling bespoke bike equipment that’s designed for long-distance bikepacking, which he runs in his spare time with his wife.

Olga’s love of science fiction and desire to be at the leading edge of things brought her to the tech industry, where she joined us initially as an intern. She quickly progressed to becoming a project manager and then almost single-handedly built up our Account Management Department from scratch. She now leads the customer success department and is passionate about the personal and professional development each new role and project offers.
In early 2020, Olga completed the three-day Developmental Sprint Leader Training with Bob Kegan, which gave her further tools to tackle the inevitable challenges of working in software development as growth opportunities in disguise.
She’s excited about the ongoing learning curve that being part of a DDO provides. Olga’s story with S&F is a living testimony to what she considers to be our core strengths – the meritocratic approach, the wide range of opportunities for growth, flexibility, and the great team spirit. Her life goals include seeing the nearby planets, achieving some great things for her descendants, and retiring to a tropical island.

As the mother of two daughters, she's been able to fine-tune her already strong skills of curiosity, empathy, and problem-solving. Anna enjoys learning from her surroundings and the intelligent and creative people that are her co-workers and clients. This love of learning can also be seen in her frequent travels and how, when at home, she likes to explore new landscapes in fiction. Anna has committed herself to creating and maintaining a nurturing space for her team members, so they can be proud of what they’ve accomplished. Creating a sense of family within the company is at the core of her work, which comes from her Ukrainian heritage and her experience as a mother (including her two cats!).

Dima finds a sense of family within S&F, and enjoys the connections that he’s been able to make with his colleagues. His passions extend to extreme sports, cars, and reality-based films. Organization plays a big role in Dima’s life and work is no exception. Yet he also values an atmosphere of transparency and professionalism.

Anna sees herself as a kind of translator in situations where people find it hard to hear each other, and looks for the win for everyone in each situation. She is learning to look at the world through the eyes of another person in order to better understand each other and work on unifying goals. She pays close attention to detail in all spheres of life, and has used this throughout her career to reflect on and optimize the processes companies use.
Anna graduated from music school and went on to study data science, politiology and history. She was one of the first HR consultants in Ukraine to use HR modules in Microsoft CPM and ERP systems. Always a forward thinker, Anna has many interests including psychology, neurophysics, being out in nature, dancing, and raising her son, who she calls her “little man of the future.”
Her career ambition is to work for an international, progressive company that creates meaningful products for people and the world alongside unique, cool people. This dream, she says, has pretty much come true.

With a flair for problem solving, project management and strategic thinking, she is the go-to person at S&F when people have ideas for improving how projects are managed. Born in Uzbekistan, Navi comes from a diverse background of Central Asian ancestry and speaks seven languages, including three dialects of Ossetian. Her childhood dream was to become a wrestler, which she has fulfilled through practising the martial art of Sambo. She also loves horseback riding.
Despite being a Sambo champion in her hometown and her valuable contributions to S&F, Navi’s proudest accomplishment to date is her agricultural investment startup, Fermopolis, which she founded because of a lack of quality local produce in Innopolis in Russia, where she now lives. Navi works full time at S&F but somehow manages to run her business alongside this, too. Her aim is to go global and one day, to spearhead a unicorn. For now, she’s proud that more and more people have heard Navi has a BSc in business information systems from Westminster University and a masters degree in software engineering from Innopolis University. She loves sharing her knowledge, creating beautiful, engaging presentations and proposals, and growing as a trainer and a coach in her role at Speed & Function.

Taking a proactive approach to her role, she sees herself in the position of a Head of Delivery one day. Natalie has tried different things throughout her education and career, and there’s no end to how she can extend her knowledge and skills. She graduated from two different programs and switched to HR from a background in sales. Having worked as a Business Development Manager, Natalie discovered she could be great at finding the right people for the right job. That’s when she decided to unleash her potential in recruitment and HR. Unsurprisingly, this type of work comes naturally to her – the ability to listen and understand any team member is one of Natalie’s strongest skills.
Intellectually curious, Natalie always finds some time to brush up her spoken English or listen to industry-related lectures. You can also find her horseback riding, doing CrossFit, reading, or playing chess (nobody knows how she manages to keep so many hobbies!). In fact, practicing sports and keeping a healthy lifestyle has become her second nature. With a spirit of gratitude to life and a flexible mind that never stops learning, Natalie is a great fit for our ambitious company. She knows for sure that to work with people and tune up the processes across different teams, you need to be mindful about what you’re doing and easily adaptable to a changing environment.

His 14 years of product and project management experience ranges from helping create a freelancer social network, leading an international community in crowdsourced educational game design, working as a manager and a lobbyist for the expansion of a California water utility, and learning freight and logistics to aid the design of an LA based Alibaba competitor platform.
Sam’s professional strengths include a focus on creative user onboarding, system gamification, contract negotiations, and operational processes improvement. In his free time Sam likes to garden with his kids, or indulge his inner game design geek by building up a role playing game that he hopes will help teach positive psychology concepts and self-awareness to teenagers.

Interestingly, she finds these two domains quite similar. At S&F, Stacy is responsible for generating new qualified leads and building relationships with existing ones. With a love of learning and trying new things, she is always keen to take on a multirole position and enjoys stretching herself by taking on new opportunities, such as getting involved in marketing and developing her agile management skills as a qualified Scrum Master.
Stacy is both career-driven (she couldn’t help working on the third day after giving birth) and a dedicated mom, and she thinks of her relationships with husband and daughter as her biggest accomplishment. What she loves the most about S&F is the team support and excitement that comes from being a part of truly interesting, challenging projects. Stacy doesn’t want to miss out on any opportunities and always shares her enthusiasm with everyone around her.

She is passionate about project management and loves working with and learning from people from all around the world in her role at Speed & Function.Highly analytical and strategic, Jen is an expert in leading and delivering projects for big data and logistics products. An experienced and certified Scrum product owner with a range of project management certifications, a masters in higher education, and a wealth of experience, she consistently delivers product releases with an exceptional track record of delivering on time whilst surpassing project goals.
Energetic, determined and resourceful, Jen is a creative with multiple passions outside of work including furniture rehab, painting, crafts, singing, baking, and photography. At Speed & Function, Jen has discovered ways to balance work and life outside work, which she credits for helping her be an even better mom. She dreams of one day opening a tea room that caters to families of all shapes and sizes and a snowball stand with her family in Florida. Her true calling is to help people so she strives to find ways to do that in every area of her life.

Coming from an educational background, Helga treasures her time with S&F (five years and counting) for the progress that she has made towards her professional development goal of becoming a recognized expert in product management – as well as towards her personal goal of making the world a better place. She also highly values the S&F team, flexible hours, and access to opportunities for growth through the regular training that the company offers.
Independent since the age of 17, Helga has moved cities (and countries!) on her own and prides herself on her perseverance, communication skills, and ability to see hidden challenges. She is motivated by her keen interest in people and in learning something new every day. Helga loves solving riddles and once spent a day going through three escape rooms! She also likes horror films and theater, the latter having been her hobby some years ago. (Interestingly, Helga remembers always being cast as evil characters – a great contrast to her personality and mission in life!).

In a way, this shouldn’t come as a surprise for someone with a personality that thrives on uncertainty so much as Lena’s does. Taking the beaten track would just feel too boring for her. She made tech management and innovation her proverbial home. So much so, that she has three university degrees under her belt that tackle precisely this field. She studied international business, management and entrepreneurship, and management consulting in Europe and the US.
The entrepreneurial bug runs through her DNA. In fact, out of her entire family, she’s the only one who doesn’t own and manage a business venture (so far). Her dream is to become a C-level tech consultant, a space that would push her to improve on her diplomacy and leadership skills. The clients that she has interacted with all saw that potential in her. Lena has embedded her entrepreneurial roots in her work at S&F, making sure everything produced by her team exceeds clients’ expectations, while taking care of her people’s wellbeing in the process.

She graduated with a dual master’s degree in Computer Science and Management and dove right into quality assurance. After a decade in the profession, she firmly believes that a good QA Engineer does not have failed projects, only routine issues to deal with and, if treated with due care, can help shape results that go well beyond clients’ expectations.
Anna’s own record of innumerable completed projects, quality products, and contented clients, is largely due to her ability to get fully immersed in her work, identify priorities, learn fast, and persevere in the face of challenges. She admits that none of her multiple certificates (ISTQB, QA automation, test management, and test analytics, to name a few), although a definite achievement, give her as much pride and satisfaction as a job well done. As one of our most experienced team members, she often takes a leading role and coaches younger colleagues, infusing them with her ceaseless excitement for new projects and ideas.
Easy-going and communicative, Anna finds joy in surrounding herself with good people and interesting events. She is proud of being a mother and a homeowner. Her free time is divided among drawing, dance, sports, hiking, reading, and watching fairy tale adaptations. With so much going on, one thing Anna never seems to find time for is getting a decent hairband: her long hair is often seen being precariously held together by a pen or a pencil. (Quite possibly, she just wants to be always prepared to sketch something – or to add another party to her diary.)

That came in handy later when Anri worked on e-commerce projects as a lead web developer with a digital marketing agency, prior to joining S&F as an Engineering Lead. Now, after more than seven years with us, Anri describes himself as "the shepherd and the priest" for our software developers in their mission to convert our clients’ needs into solid products. He is, in turn, much valued by the team for his proficiency in everything JavaScript, approachability, patience, reliability, and his inquiring mind.
Anri is exceedingly modest and does not like the concept of being "proud" of anything. He does admit though to a superb collection of funny stories, sufficient for a good book (we add, much anticipated if he ever decides to go ahead with it!). For now, it, however, remains a project of the distant future, while Anri is busy traveling and hiking with his wife, being an avid music fan, playing guitar, and watching his favorite TV shows.

Oh, and get this: he was almost a pro athlete back in the day, dabbled in basketball, and even helped train MMA fighters when he was 26.
That flair for drama from his childhood? Probably why he's such a magnetic communicator. Eli doesn't just boss people around – he's in the trenches, rallying everyone towards a shared mission. It's like he's a general who fights side by side with his squad.
Away from the tech world, Eli's full of surprises. Ever hear someone claim living in Canada might be cheaper than Europe? That's him. All in all, Eli's one of those rare gems: killer talent with a personality that sticks with you. Plus, the projects he touches? Gold.

She went on to lead a number of projects from inception to finish, mastering myriad tech skills along the way. Not surprisingly, when a friend introduced Ellen to S&F, she felt like it was a match made in heaven. Open-minded, extraverted, flexible, and self-motivated, she found a perfect environment to set free her infinite curiosity and realize her versatile potential.
Outside of work, Ellen maintains a strong interest in her original field of studies and reads extensively on psychology, medicine, and nutrition. These come in particularly handy now, as she and her husband recently became parents for the first time.

Eugene considers himself to be a highly disciplined person, and the level of self-organization he maintains in his personal life proves to be quite helpful at work. But not only that makes him a confident team leader, but he also has a fair share of experience under his belt. Eugene has worked on many projects in various niches, both building them from scratch and improving what was already there. He’s particularly enthusiastic about contributing to challenging assignments that have a real impact on human lives.
What drives him most about his job at S&F is a great team and the ability to keep up with the best engineering practices while maintaining a positive, friendly environment. He enjoys working with self-starters who know what they’re doing and facilitating others’ jobs with automation tools. Eugene is motivated to make the world a better place: as ambitious as it sounds, he believes that our society can grow to be kinder and have a higher quality of life. On a personal level, he makes his living better by taking regular trips, at least once in two weeks. Besides getting away from it all to enjoy the sea, mountains, or forests, he spends time reading history books and watching documentaries.

He enjoys road trips, learning new development languages, and annual ski trips. Driven by his sense of achievement when he successfully finishes a project, Vlad has ambitions to become a senior developer and to dive deeper into specific languages such as Python. Vlad is always up for learning about development architecture and enhancing his technical skills, as well as discovering new things about his surroundings.

Anatoliy likes to feel useful and in-demand and enjoys the opportunity to work with cutting-edge technology in a supportive team while dealing with something new and unexpected every day. That is not, however, why Anatoly wakes up early every morning; like many parents of young children, he has to go through a considerable "to-do" list to get his two kids ready for school before he can dive into coding.
Persistent and meticulous, Anatoly can figure out anything that interests him, even if it is completely unrelated to his profession. Almost anything, that is – as long as he knows where he’s going with his research. (In one instance, just like Jules Verne’s Jacque Paganel, Anatoliy learned how to say a few phrases in perfect Portuguese, where what he actually needed was Spanish!).

Within the past ten years, he has ventured into a variety of web development and e-commerce directions, and now holds certificates in web design, e-commerce, database development, and web layout, on top of his degrees in engineering, applied science, and management. With S&F, Max is currently focusing on User Interface engineering, with an eye towards taking responsibility for entire projects (and their teams) sometime in the near future. Outside of the office, he has dabbled in snowboarding, kitesurfing, paragliding, surfing and photography, among other things, while constantly trying something new.
Despite his hankering for novelty, Max is endearingly pedantic in his daily habits. He wakes up with the sun and takes his Scotch terrier for a walk. Once he gets to the office, he makes sure that none of the windows are draped and that there is as much light in the room as there can be. Then he brews himself a cup of tea, the first of about twenty he drinks while working (or of about a hundred if he is having a stressful day). He is very precise in how his desk should be organized and knows immediately if anyone has touched it. Max’s favorite aspects of his work are socializing with clients and colleagues and finding optimal solutions to people’s needs and problems. Together with his adventurous and punctilious nature, his well-developed communication skills make him particularly good at it.

His current focus is on enhancing the testing processes and products as a whole from the consumer’s point of view, adopting an approach which Paul himself describes as "pedantic" and "quality manic".
Having chosen S&F for the opportunity to work remotely, Paul is highly valued for his confidence, strong understanding of business and product development, and the ability to effectively communicate with anyone. Paul loves the routine and simplicity of home life with his wife and three-year-old daughter and works continuously on improving its quality, too. His free time is dedicated to professional photography.

Goal-oriented, persistent, and curious, Stephan prides himself on his multifaceted skill set and ability to make quick decisions. He appreciates the opportunity to take up challenging tasks in a team of interesting individuals, which he has found at S&F.
Stephan describes his personal goal simply — "to see the world". We suspect he wants to do that as a touring rock star, knowing that he plays guitar and is learning to play piano, or, as an amateur detective investigating macabre mysteries – considering his love of crime novels, especially those of Edgar Allan Poe.

Not the Van Gogh type, for he wanted to create something beautiful and useful, preferably without any risk to his bodily integrity. Alex found his calling in software engineering and Ruby on Rails, and is currently focusing on the back end, with an eye towards becoming an indispensable Fullstack CMS developer.
Alex is valued in the S&F team for his lack of preconception and prejudice, high trainability, and attention to detail. He charms our clients with the way he cares about how the projects he contributes to will turn out, as well as with his surprisingly minute reports. Unlike many others, Alex is impatient to turn 45, the blissful moment when he releases his kids into the world. While he considers them his main source of pride and motivation, he does look forward to the time when he can finally enjoy all his favorite animated features, especially Japanese anime, in uninterrupted peace and quiet.

Before recently joining S&F, Kristina worked on web development and tech solutions for music education, with a strong emphasis on graphic design, interactive features, and animation. In the meantime, she learned English by watching TV shows and YouTube videos, while also developing a keen interest in languages less widely spoken (her most recent fascination is Irish).
Kristina likes myths and adventure in all shapes and forms, especially if they are a product of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. When not immersed in the latest Avengers installment, she enjoys alternative rock, watches TV shows (her favorites include The Office, Parks and Recreation, Doctor Who, and Breaking Bad), and cheers for ManU.

He especially likes addressing new challenges to which he does not have an immediate answer. Vas is inspired by the idea that he may one day create a product that would attract customers directly through its webpage or a GitHub, without the need to proactively and continuously sell it.
Vas studied in Moscow and got a PhD in Fluid Dynamics. In 2007, much to his friends’ consternation, he moved to Kyiv — and has not regretted that decision for a day. He appreciates the more relaxed pace of life and the opportunity to often work from home, dedicates to his wife Irina and two daughters, Sofia and Margarita, the hours he would otherwise spend commuting.

But he does know a thing or two about more concrete matters, like hitting the keyboard and writing clean and organized code. As a tech lead, Mike enjoys solving problems that are both technical and human in nature. He spent a lot of time around senior developers, learning the ropes of the craft (enough to make him think Angular was easy to learn). He has also worked in teams that were creating spaghetti code and understood the pain of having to deal with the aftermath of such scenarios. These hardships taught him the value of being disciplined with his coding concepts.
His master skill is recognizing each person’s potential. Right from the start, Mike likes to notice what people are made of and pair them up with the tasks that he knows they’ll excel at. He’s almost always right about this. His trickster attitude gives him a curious edge over others and makes him a fun team member to be around. In his spare time, you’ll find Mike composing his own music or touring with his rock band, Eye on Attraction, around the world.

She likes accounting; she could stay at university to educate others on this topic but "teaching is not mine," says Eleni. After graduating, she went to work at a bank and later got into the IT industry.

A notable fact: Eleni was so open in the community that HRs chatted with her frequently. That’s how she knew about the vacancy at S&F. Eleni joined the team when it was 2-3 times smaller. Now, Eleni is one of those people who develop together with the company. She truly loves her job, her two children, and the quality time with the family. And when there’s some free time, she goes into nature to paint a landscape in serenity.

Kind, empathetic, optimistic, and creative, Anastasia loves people and has an uncommonly high level of emotional intelligence. In addition to taking care of all kinds of household matters at our office, Anastasia plays an important role in HR management by helping onboard new staff, facilitating internal communications, and organizing corporate events, trainings, team building activities, and birthday celebrations. She also helps our overseas staff develop their English language skills and arranges tutoring, speaking clubs, and testing support.
Anastasia values the atmosphere at S&F where everyone can express their opinions freely and be heard, and draws her inspiration to grow from working with the team of bright individuals. It is easy to see how neither would have been there without Anastasia. A win-win! (Incidentally, it is one of the principles promoted by her favorite book – Stephen Covey’s "7 Habits of Highly-Effective People"). True to the first part of her mission, Anastasia does not spend all of her time being a "mom" to everyone at S&F. Some of the things that make her life a happy one are raising her young daughter, taking fitness classes, and studying psychology.

She is now, among other, responsible for keeping our CRM up to date, tracking opportunities, making sure we provide all the necessary communications to our clients at the pre-sales stage, conducting research, and drafting reports, while also hoping to eventually dabble in data management and operations.
Alyona’s vision of the world as a place where animals thrive living alongside people starts in her own household. Her two cats are perpetually forgiven for waking her up early in the morning, get priority to be fed breakfast, and, unlike Alyona’s husband, are allowed on her work-related Skype calls (you may occasionally see them staring straight into the camera). They also share Alyona’s love of stretching exercises but are less supportive of her other pursuits such as reading and traveling.

Taking a proactive approach to her role, she sees herself in the position of a Head of Delivery one day. Natalie has tried different things throughout her education and career, and there’s no end to how she can extend her knowledge and skills. She graduated from two different programs and switched to HR from a background in sales. Having worked as a Business Development Manager, Natalie discovered she could be great at finding the right people for the right job. That’s when she decided to unleash her potential in recruitment and HR. Unsurprisingly, this type of work comes naturally to her – the ability to listen and understand any team member is one of Natalie’s strongest skills.
Intellectually curious, Natalie always finds some time to brush up her spoken English or listen to industry-related lectures. You can also find her horseback riding, doing CrossFit, reading, or playing chess (nobody knows how she manages to keep so many hobbies!). In fact, practicing sports and keeping a healthy lifestyle has become her second nature. With a spirit of gratitude to life and a flexible mind that never stops learning, Natalie is a great fit for our ambitious company. She knows for sure that to work with people and tune up the processes across different teams, you need to be mindful about what you’re doing and easily adaptable to a changing environment.

These qualities, among many others, animate her work as a service designer within Speed & Function. Her playing fields in life are people, tech, and the arts. She calls herself a drawer-entrepreneur, a direction that she discovered from a very young age. How so? Well, during her kindergarten years, she used to sell her artistic creations to other children – a fact that got her punished by her teachers.
From the art of the pencil, Katia moved on to the art of conversation and mediation. With over 8 years of experience in customer care, she developed a soft spot for building bridges in a dynamic stakeholder environment. In S&F, Katia wishes to promote multiculturalism, because she has seen the benefits of appreciating different angles when working together with others. Katia is one of the few people who can say that she embodies innovation in organizational culture because she created her own role from scratch. Through hard work, her position became the backbone of our clients’ experience with S&F. They not only get great results thanks to Katia’s involvement, but live an immersive cultural experience as well.