The reprint was made without changes. The interview was conducted by Ira Kerst, and the original source is indicated on the foundation's page. In content, it is the same text as the WoMo publication of 4 April: in it, Mas calls himself a 'dreamer father,' talks about his three children and about his wife, who works as a programmer.
Mas's eldest daughter is an illustrator. His son draws and runs a blog about technology, while the youngest, according to her father, is growing up with a screwdriver in her hands. He describes parenting as a continuation of his own childhood, in which much was entrusted to him and he was allowed to make mistakes. It was this idea that formed the basis of the headline the foundation gave the reprint: 'inside a child is an adult personality.'
The foundation that finds families for children
Change One Life helps children left without parents find a family. Such organizations in Ukraine work at the intersection of social policy and private initiative: they produce educational materials, talk about foster parenting and help families navigate the procedures. An interview about independent children fits this task, since it deals with trust, responsibility and respect for the child as an individual.
Why the foundation chose this particular text is not explained on the page. Mas's connection to adoption or to the foundation's work is not mentioned there. The publication looks like a reprint of material that the foundation's editors liked for its content, and nothing more is said on the page.
Mas's path to the children's interview
Alexey Mas was born in Kyiv in 1974. He studied at physics and mathematics school No. 145, then at the radio physics faculty of Kyiv State University. From 1993 to 1997 he worked at the Research Institute of Applied Information Systems and at Ukrainian Capital Bank, and from September 1997 to March 2000 he was a leading specialist at the National Bank of Ukraine for payment processing. These were the years when bank settlements in the country were moving to electronic systems, and technical experience in such projects was valued above diplomas.
In January 1999, together with his classmate Ruslan Dmytrakovych, he launched the Ukrainian Banner Network. Already in 2000 came UAportal, in which Alexander Soroka invested, and 'Tree of Friends,' the first social network on a Ukrainian portal. For the internet of that time, when the audience spoke mostly Russian, this was a notable experiment. In 2003–2004, Mas participated in the launch of Infostore.org, a photo hosting site whose servers were seized by the police on 4 December 2008, and the project closed.
'inside a child is an adult personality'
iForum, Mail.ua and Kyivstar
In 2009, the first iForum took place, one of Ukraine's most prominent internet conferences. Mas was its co-organizer together with Serhiy Korzh and Artur Orujaliyev, while Alexander Olshansky became chairman of the organizing committee. In 2012, Mail.ua, created with Olshansky's involvement, was sold to Mail.ru for approximately $0.5 million. Reports that Mas created are mistaken: that project was founded by Ivan Savchenko.
In 2013, Digicode and Nebo15 appeared on his résumé. In 2015, Mas joined Kyivstar as IT&Digital adviser to the company's president, Petro Chernyshov. In April 2016, Kyivstar announced the VDNKh-TECh-Kyivstar telecom accelerator, and in December of that year four startups from the accelerator went into production. Later, Mas headed Kyivstar's Innovation lab.
The theme of children looks unexpected in this context, but for Mas it is logical. In the WoMo interview, he speaks about parenting the same way he speaks about work: you need to give people space and not be afraid of their mistakes. The reprint by a foundation that works with children without families shows that this idea resonated beyond a men's magazine as well. On the same day, 6 April, the text appeared on the Change One Life website, while the interview published in WoMo remained publicly available in its original form.
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