Daria Fonina

My career journey started in an unexpected way - as a volunteer designer for UA Animals, an animal protection organization in Ukraine. As I learned design through that work, I built my commercial career starting with printing design for magazines and packages, which was my specialty from university. When I realized the world was changing, I moved into the digital realm, working with social media and web design. Five years ago, I joined a global fintech company that implements behavioral data into credit scoring, and I've grown through every stage from junior designer to my recent promotion as brand lead of the whole company. I learned from the highest level people and kept getting promoted, and now I'm preparing to lead a team of five people. Throughout my commercial career, I've maintained my passion for nonprofit work with UA Animals, creating designs for major international campaigns. My work appeared on the Wall Street Bull during protests highlighting problems in Ukraine from the war, which destroys not just people's houses but also nature and animals. I've designed for the Stop Ecocide Ukraine campaign, Chernobyl anniversary protests across Europe, the Animal Protection Award, and the Humane Book for Kids award. I work in two main fields: the social one where I want to make this world a better place, and the commercial one where I want to make my life better. My typical day involves morning calls with my Ukraine nonprofit team due to the time difference, then prioritizing tasks for my team of five, doing manual design work in programs like Figma and Adobe Suite (though AI has made this easier), and analyzing how my work influences outcomes. A huge part of my job is keeping brand consistency across the company, which is challenging in a startup with only 5 people on the marketing team trying to keep 30 people across the company on brand.