Dmitriy believes happiness lives in calmness, not eventfulness, and that calmness comes from focus, born of patience and curiosity, which in turn require honesty and compassion, starting with oneself.
With over twenty years leading people and organizations, from small businesses to companies of several thousand, across IT and non-IT alike, – Dima sees himself less as a manager and more as a strategic leader, driven by a lifelong urge to teach and to learn. That thread runs from his early years as a camp counselor and English tutor, through his time as an agile evangelist guiding organizational transformation, to today, where he leads a 300-person unit, coaches his company’s executives and founder-partners, and mentors every person on his own leadership team through a genuinely uncertain world.
Born in Ukraine and now based in Portugal, with time lived across Germany, the Netherlands, the US, and nearly five years in Southeast Asia, Dima works comfortably across cultures and perspectives.
Coming from a family of teachers, doctors, and engineers, this path felt inevitable – a mix of helping professions and a fascination with people as the most interesting systems there are. He works mostly with leaders and founders, people-first, and isn’t shy about saying no when the fit isn’t right.
Walking Mentorship found Dima less as a new direction than an inevitable one: hiking and long journeys on foot, bike, and road have shaped his life since childhood. He believes the farther the horizon, the clearer the thinking: open sky over a room with perfectly white walls. That instinct rests on fifteen-plus years of coaching and mentoring craft, and a firm belief that mentoring is a two-way street – hearing someone’s story while sharing his own, and finding where they intersect.
People who’ve worked with Dima describe someone who brings real excitement and safe atmosphere, positivity and encouragement to the process; though he can be direct when it’s needed, rather than letting rumination run in circles. He’s also a dreamer: dreaming while walking, swimming in open water, or watching the sun drop below a ridge — present in the moment and in the dream at once, sharpened by a long-standing love of philosophical and technological science fiction.
