Katya is an EMCC Senior Practitioner accredited leadership coach, but their biggest passions are Inclusion, Equity and Diversity. Their work is dedicated to empowering individuals and organisations to find the methods, techniques and language that bring them together in a way that everyone can be their best self at work.
Already an award-winning learning provider and entrepreneur, Katya joined Utopia in 2022, where they are a Change Maker part of the leadership team, working with businesses such as Coca-Cola Europacific Partners, Google, Kellogg’s, KP Snacks, Nestlé, Nomura, Spotify and Universal Music.
Katya has a background in architecture and digital construction. Their experience with healthcare design and building information modelling eventually brought out a passion for people and shaped her innate instinct for communication into an effective and poignant tool for collaboration. Katya has supported world-renowned organisations, such as Grimshaw Architects and Alisson Brooks Architects in their endeavours to adopt digital technologies in their design. Faced with training highly skilled professionals in new tools, Katya developed a delicate, yet stimulating approach to drive anyone, regardless of their seniority, to improvement and innovation in their work in a joyful and positive spirit. Within their work for promoting digital adoption and diversity in the construction industry, Katya has shared their experience with and has been recognised by numerous audiences in the UK and abroad, including AU Las Vegas 2018, where they addressed over 500 people and UK Construction Week 2019, where they were named one of top 4 Construction Role Models. Their ability to break down complex concepts and find connections relevant to the listener has proven to truly make an impact.
As a queer immigrant person, Katya has always been naturally drawn toward various social initiatives to promote diversity in the workplace. Those have always been endlessly gratifying, so, like so many amid the Covid Pandemic and global social justice unrest, they paused for a moment of reflection. They delved into coaching and coaching cultures and they reminded them very much of social justice organising and indigenous governing and they knew that they needed to turn away from the buildings – the context, to the contents – people.
