Things you didn't know about UCU employees...

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Inessa Kovalenko

Inessa attending at
Training Day 2010

Did you know that Inessa Kovalenko, Admin Support at HQ, used to work at the Rivne Atomic Energy Station in Kuznetsovsk in Rivne oblast? Don’t worry, she’s not radioactive! She worked at the head office there as an administrative staffer. One of the big projects she worked on was converting hundreds of text file documents containing job descriptions of managerial and other key staff from an old program called Norton Commander (remember when everyone and his brother was in the word-processing business) to Word documents.

Rivne AES. You almost want to vacation there,
it looks so idyllic

She was also involved in staff training. She created training packages and training presentations for staff (something she still does occasionally for UCU!). One of the projects she remembers fondly was helping to put together a conference for 5 other power stations that were interested in learning about the training initiatives for reactor and turbine engineers that Rivne AES was undertaking.

Inessa has been working with UCU for 6 years now. It all started when she dropped off a resume at our North York branch. Sadly, we didn’t have a spot for her then. However, Inessa persisted (see it pays to be persistent). When, shortly afterwards, she needed to find a co-op placement for a finance course she was taking, she applied again. This time she got the job. What was originally a 3 month co-op placement has turned into 6 years at UCU.

Now for those who were kind enough to read to the end of this article, here is a bonus fact about Inessa, she also makes some wonderful hand-made clothing – “Beautiful” in the words of Marie Stamler, Senior Executive Assistant at UCU. In Ukraine she used to make them for her friends, but here we keep her so busy that she only has time to make clothing for herself (as I was writing this article, Inessa came by to show off a wonderful leather and suede coat that she made for herself – look out Stella McCartney!)

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