On March 4, 2026, as part of the NextUp project of the Peace School, an online meeting was held with Yevhen Kotelnytskyi—a programmer with 17 years of experience in web development, a department head at NIX, and an active volunteer. The Peace School has been operating for four years under the motto “There is no peace without education for peace,” and this meeting served as yet another confirmation that true leadership is not a position, but a willingness to act.
The discussion was moderated by Ksenia Kodzhebash, who introduced Yevhen not merely as a guest but as her longtime friend and trusted partner in volunteer work. “This is a person who doesn’t speak loudly—he acts very effectively,” she said. For her, this meeting was special because, despite their long acquaintance, she had seen Yevhen behind the wheel of a volunteer van more often than behind a computer screen. Junior Ambassador for Peace Taisiya Ostrova, a student at Kyiv’s 85th Lyceum and a business academy in the Czech Republic, helped facilitate the conversation by asking the guest questions on behalf of the younger generation.
From a magazine in the mail to leading a team
Yevhen shared that his journey into programming began over 20 years ago, with a paper magazine ordered by regular mail. Back then, IT wasn’t a trendy profession, and computers seemed like a distant prospect. He recalled a funny anecdote: when he was applying to university in 2008, a girl next to him in the admissions office told her mom she wanted to study programming, and her mom, surprised, asked where she would find a job. However, it was precisely the lack of limits in technology that captivated Yevhen forever. “There’s practically no ceiling that you’ve reached and hit. You can always go higher,” he noted.
For him, leadership became not an ambition, but a tool. He explained that you can’t accomplish anything significant on your own, even if you work 24 hours a day. When there are 10, 100, or 150 people on a team, the scale of achievements is entirely different. It was the desire to build something together that led him to a leadership position, not a quest for status. To achieve this, he even had to stop being a programmer in the literal sense—to move away from writing code and focus on managing processes and motivating people.
Before the war, Yevgen and his team at NIX were actively involved in social initiatives—organizing free lectures on programming and project management in Kharkiv. The scale was impressive: thousands of people attended these in-person events over two days, and in some lecture halls at the Art Factory “Mechanika,” up to 800 attendees gathered at once. For Yevhen, this was a continuation of that same social need—to do something useful for others.
Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence
The conversation naturally turned to digital transformation in Ukraine. Yevhen emphasized the importance of electronic documents and registries, particularly the “Diya” app, which has become a critically important tool for millions of Ukrainians. “A paper document can be easily forged, while an electronic one can be verified in a second,” he emphasized. The transition to electronic registries has significantly increased the security of personal data and trust in document management.
Yevhen paid special attention to artificial intelligence. He noted that this term is currently too grandiose for what it actually is: large language models are complex algorithms trained on outputs of human activity, incapable of feeling, thinking, or evaluating themselves. “This is not the kind of intelligence that can somehow evaluate itself or feel anything—the very things that define us as human beings,” he explained. At the same time, Yevhen expressed hope that these technologies will have a significant impact on medicine and other important fields, rather than merely generating entertainment content. He emphasized that the profession of a programmer has not disappeared due to the emergence of AI; specialists have simply begun using new tools to work more efficiently.
Volunteering and Balance
One of the most heartfelt moments of the meeting was Yevhen’s story about balancing his career, volunteering, and personal life. He admitted: when asked in a similar interview how he manages to do it all, his wife, who was standing nearby, burst out laughing because she knew it was impossible. Over four years of volunteering, Yevhen gave up his hobbies—motorsports and snowboarding—and found time for them there. “It’s not the best strategy, because you still need to maintain a balance; otherwise, you can’t be effective,” he acknowledged. At the same time, his responsibility for the team at NIX remained unchanged: clients from Europe and the U.S. respect the situation but do not compromise on their quality requirements.
Advice for young people and a look into the future
When asked by Taisiya about the skills young developers need, Yevgen replied that the most important things are motivation and interest, because they are what turn any person into a strong specialist. Among promising fields, he highlighted Data Science, analytics, and working with large language models. And web development, he said, will remain in demand, although competition in this field is growing.
Concluding the meeting, Yevgen expressed confidence that Ukraine will become a country with a powerful technology industry, already gaining international recognition. For the young ambassadors of peace, this conversation served as a vivid example of how a profession can become a tool for influence, and how leadership is not a privilege but a responsibility. As the moderator summarized: “Technology becomes a force only when it is backed by character.”