Things you didn't know about UCU employees..

Spot light on:

Stin Hrycajkiw

Today the spotlight is on Stin Hrycajkiw, who as a graphic designer is an important part of our marketing team. Beside designing our ads and posters and other things, Stin also plans and organizes events, and works on projects that range from the Toronto Ukrainian Festival to student-related events.

Stin started working at UCU last January and has not looked back yet. We’ll let Stin say a few words about herself:

“I studied and graduated from the graphic design program at George Brown College in Toronto. I started my graphic design career by working for the Canadian clothing company Cotton Ginny as a junior Graphic Designer and moved up in the company over the course of 5 years. At the same time I worked for their sister company the department store SAAN as a graphic designer. Afterwords I moved to the beauty supply company Trade Secrets as a senior graphic designer before coming here to UCU.”

Stin is originally from Montreal where her father was involved in one of the local Ukrainian credit unions, so it’s really quite appropriate that Stin has ended up working with us. It’s almost like a part of family tradition!

Stin is multi-talented – we are not kidding, we’ll let her give us a partial list in her own words, as we got carpal tunnel just trying to type all that stuff up:

“When I’m not doing graphic design I’m gathering friends together for art projects, or I’m bloggin on Youtube about hair tutorials, doing stop motion animation, drawing and painting, gymnastics, refinishing furniture, blogging, salsa dancing or lending my voice to radio commercials for my husband’s audio production company.”

Stin in New York

You can see some of those tutorials at the following links:

Hair tutorial Vlogger 
Stop motion animation 
Painter 
Blogger

On top of all that, Stin has a bucket list that among other things includes the following:

• Learn to raise one eyebrow.
• Juggle... better.
• Perfect the pendulum yo-yo trick
• See the Aurora Borealis
• Learn a musical instrument
• Travel.. everywhere!

On the travel front Stin says:

“Best place I’ve traveled to was definately Brazil. It’s a beautiful country. The most thrilling was ziplining through Costa Rica in a thunderstrom. The most inspiring is New York, it’s a creative re-charge!"

Stin collects memories, ideas, friends and owl tchotchkes. Other things that you need to know about Stin include:

• She’s a former gymnast who recently joined a circus troupe as a tumbler and trapeze artist
• She’s a balloon animal maker
•  For half her life she feared oranges while adoring orange juice
• She has a doppleganger living in Richmiond Hill (but seriously, who doesn’t? Eh folks?)
• She knows the Jabberwocky poem by Lewis Carrol by heart (Okay, we ARE NOT buying that one – someone should call her on that)

Anyway, so now you know a bit about Stin. We’ll leave you with her favourite quote:

“Dear math, I’m not a therapist, solve your own problems!”