Women Of The C-Suite: Elaina Shekhter, of EPAM Systems, On The Five Things You Need To Succeed As A Senior Executive

As a part of our interview series called “Women of the C-Suite”, we had the pleasure of interviewing Elaina Shekhter, Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer at EPAM Systems, Inc.

Elaina leads EPAM's global marketing and strategy, integrating functions that have a significant influence on the Company's strategy, positioning and worldwide brand. She has held various leadership roles within EPAM, including global head of business development and global head of the travel and consumer business unit. She serves on the boards of Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Audigent and Sigmaledger, and is an advisory board member for the MACH Alliance. She actively supports emerging technology initiatives, and her commitment to artificial intelligence and sustainability drives EPAM's investment in these areas.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

I didn’t intend to get into marketing or strategy, but I have always been fascinated by different business models and opportunities to compete and succeed in new and innovative ways. One of the first lessons I learned early in my career was the binary difference between success and failure. Many ideas, scenarios and plans go into taking key decisions and the process is not always connected to the result. The key is understanding what you want to do and when and why you want to do it and to think effectively -- in bets. Once you know your bet and its corresponding plan, put the plans into motion to drive towards the desired outcome. This is ultimately the exciting part of strategy for me, the models, analysis and even the psychology of the game – and of course the fact that the outcomes are never assured. It’s an incredibly entrepreneurial way of working and living, which is what got me to EPAM in the first place.

And marketing for EPAM was initially all about Go to Market. We didn’t have much choice as no one knew who we were, and we were already a public company.  Today for us, marketing is about storytelling and crafting compelling offerings and propositions that answer the key customer question, “Why should I work with you?” Once we had some understanding of our objectives and the confidence to clearly communicate these, it became easier to articulate this narrative in a way that resonated with our various stakeholders. And today, whether I am speaking with employees, investors or clients, I use the strategic approach to communicate and explain why EPAM is the clear choice over other companies. These two parts of my role and my interest in thinking and working in bets, are critically important to who I am as a leader and what I have brought to the company over all these years.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

There have been too many interesting stories to name. But one left me with a key insight. Before stepping into the corporate officer role, I ran EPAM’s consumer business unit, a role I held for most of my career in one way or another. In this role, I had the opportunity to work with a large multinational beverage company on a large transformation – and it was my executive relationship. During the growth stages of our collaboration, some EPAM employees raised concerns about working with the Company, primarily due to its perceived impact on environment and social responsibility. Instead of shying away from these objections, I took it upon myself to take a deeper look, which became an incredibly complex exercise. In my research I found that the Company was investing in global ESG initiatives and local communities—to offset its global plant expansions, it was helping lift communities out of poverty by building roads and water treatment facilities in remote areas and investing in micro-entrepreneurship programs that empowered women, just to name a few.

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