25 years of Constructors: Anna Ladyshenski - the Scout

In honor of Constructor University's 25th anniversary, we're casting a spotlight on alumni from past graduating classes to showcase the diversity, values and impact that Constructors bring into the world. You can check out our interviews with other notable alumni on our 25th Anniversary web page.

This week, we connected with Anna Ladyshenski from the class of 2011, a thought leader and creator of the first Blockchain recruitment hub of its kind at Page Executive.

QUICK FACTS:

• Graduation Year: 2011
• Major: Social Sciences
• College: Nordmetall
• The best part of campus life: always being close to interesting activities, from motto parties and cultural events to special lectures and dance classes.  
• One unforgettable campus memory: the graduation day and party was truly special. I remember going to bed at 11 am the next morning, after the party continued from the official venue to the student bar.
• What I miss about student life: Staying up until 5 a.m. studying or going out. Nowadays anything past midnight is a challenge!

Years after completing her degree in Social Sciences at Jacobs University, Anna has built a pioneering career at the intersection of human talent and emerging tech. As a thought leader and creator of the first Blockchain recruitment hub of its kind at Page Executive, she regularly takes the stage at international conferences across Europe, championing diversity and navigating the fast-paced crypto landscape with a global mindset.

We sat down with Anna to talk about how her career dreams shifted from the UN to the c-suite, her experience as a woman working in the blockchain sphere, and how the simple act of opening a banana opened her eyes to the power of intercultural perspective.

Decision-making is a central theme of our 25th anniversary campaign. Which decisions have had the greatest impact on your own life and career?

I am happy that I always tried to find work opportunities outside of just studying, completing three internships and two working-student jobs during my three years of studies. This helped enormously to decide what kind of career I wanted to focus on later. When I started studying Social Sciences, I thought I'd like to work for the EU commission or United Nations, but I quickly realized that I saw myself more in the business sector.

One decision I would do differently now looking back is adding a semester abroad. Before coming to Jacobs, I rejected a confirmed undergraduate spot to study Law at the University College London, because while I wanted an international environment, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to spend three full years abroad—potentially longer depending on work opportunities—away from family. I was fortunate to do a two-month internship in Brussels, but I believe an additional semester abroad would have been valuable for broadening my horizons.

How did your experience at Jacob's help shape your world view?

The most impactful was the opportunity to live with students from all over the world. It was very rewarding, and occasionally challenging, but it helped me understand that even things I take as a given may be perceived completely differently in another culture, and yet make total sense from that perspective. One simple example: I remember asking my colleagues from Romania why they open a banana "the other way around," since I genuinely thought that how I was taught to open a banana was the only "logical" way. It turns out these Romanian students had a different but equally valid reason for opening it from the other end. Both could be seen as logical and correct, just from different perspectives.

Did the experience of navigating different cultures together in a shared environment lead to forging particular strong relationships, and how have these relationships persisted since graduating?

For me, the relationships with alumni is the most meaningful from my Jacobs days. While there are other universities with excellent students and professors, there are few universities where you get to meet so many of them and can build more personal relationships, due to the (then) small size of the university. I was introduced to Jacobs by my boyfriend at the time, an alum of the pioneering class, and my first event at Jacobs before I joined was in fact an alumni meeting. Ffter graduation, two of my job offers and the job I accepted came directly through my alumni network.

You have carved a career from your  passion for blockchain and crypto—starting the first blockchain recruitment hub of its kind at Page Group and actively engaging as a thought leader through speaking engagements and conferences. When did this passion emerge, and is it something you can trace back to your Jacobs days?

Back when I started studying at Jacobs, I never would have thought this would happen. Bitcoin was something that became more and more relevant after I graduated. I had heard about it, but never really had any interest until 2020/2021, the year of the Covid lockdowns, when borders closed and you had to sit at home for months on end. Blockchain became my obsession, starting with researching Cryptocurrencies and trends for personal retail investments (which did not work out too well). But thanks to having worked at Michael Page on tech recruitment, I also developed a passion for the sphere and its constant fast-paced innovation (ranging from NFTs to DeFi - decentralized finance, stablecoins, as well as innovative concepts like DePIN).

While the Crypto sphere from the outside often looks like a place of gambling and scamming due to a lot of negative news around it during its gold rush era, it is also a place where some of the smartest people - from developers and scientists to sales and financial market leaders- around the globe work on decentralisation and democratisation of resources of all sorts: finance, knowledge, compute power, etc. I became very passionate about the tech and community behind it and as a result, decided to shift my career into building the first recruitment hub within my company that has focused on international Blockchain recruitment since 2022/2023. Since then, I very much enjoyed growing a network from scratch, travelling across Europe and the Middle East for conferences, meeting and placing incredibly smart people into leading projects, and being an ambassador and speaker at major global Crypto events like Paris Blockchain Week or Proof of Talk in the Louvre in Paris. 

These spaces have a certain reputation for being male dominated and highly competitive, with terms like “crypto-bro” being both explicitly gendered and somewhat pejorative. How does this characterization align with your own experience as a woman working in and passionate about crypto and blockchain?  

I have had mostly good experiences as a woman in the Blockchain space. At conferences, people are often happy to see women actively participating, and there are women in high profile leadership roles and female founders. Admittedly, we are far away from a 50:50 ratio and there still is a lot to improve, but this is the case in almost anything labelled "Tech". Only 5 percent of my applicants for purely technical leadership roles like CTOs are female, which is still shocking considering that the first computer scientist in the world was a woman named Ada Lovelace.

Another fact that not many people know is that programming used to be a purely female profession before things changed in the 1970s. I believe if more women learned that we were not traditionally inferior in tech, but that women were the actual computer scientists - many more women would dare to venture into Tech. Blockchain is definitely a welcoming place for women. For example, the Cardano project's currency is called Ada in recognition of Ada Lovelace's immense contribution as the first computer scientist.

Thinking about today’s global challenges and looking forward to the next 25 years, what kind of legacy do you think Constructor University can or should have in the world?

What makes Constructor University stand out is the focus on excellence. There is a high diversity among the student body, but if you look at alumni and their career paths, they are very often forging strong and meaningful careers, regardless of whether they're in academia, the corporate world, international relations and politics, or the start-up ecosystem. What unites us is striving for excellence, as well as making an impact.