"It is important to find a business that will bring not only financial stability, but also benefit others" —  said Anna Pushkova, an alumna of the Graduate School of Management at St. Petersburg University (GSOM SPbU), an entrepreneur, educational consultant and blogger. At the VI International Youth Labor Forum. She shared her experience of building her own business with students.

Anna's path is very different from the traditional path of her fellow students working in consulting. From the age of 17, she studied abroad in England, Italy and Hong Kong, and in six years of higher education she did not complete a single internship. “Working for a corporation or the Big Three was never in my career plans because I was born into an entrepreneurial family,” she explained, adding that she was always on the lookout for ideas. The first attempt to create her own business immediately after graduating from GSOM SPbU was unsuccessful — a high-tech startup did not find a response from the market. After a pause, Anna decided to try to start a simple, understandable, and most importantly useful business for people and the world.

“I thought that I could talk about education, because most of my life I studied abroad and I know a lot about it. I started a blog, although it was very difficult to start. After a few posts, feedback appeared — students wrote that they were very inspired by my texts. A month later, I gave my first paid lecture, and it brought me 10 thousand rubles. I was the happiest person when I discovered that my favorite activity could be profitable; I confess that later I was not even so happy with the first million. Step by step, everything began to take shape: the audience came, I gathered a team and began to launch new projects, including non-commercial ones. Now my media covers more than 100,000 students, and 20 people work on projects, with whom we sent more than 3,000 students abroad.”

Anna Pushkova

In 2020, Anna founded a scholarship to study abroad named after her father A.G. Pushkov, who passed away, but was always the ideological inspirer of her study abroad.

In 2022, scholarships will be awarded to two students applying for Bachelor or Master programs in business, management and entrepreneurship. In addition to financial support, each scholarship holder will receive full mentoring upon admission, including assistance in choosing a university, developing a profile and working on a package of documents.

“My advice is to look for an activity that will bring you not only financial well-being, but also inspiration, pleasure and a sense of belonging to something more. Try, create. If the fire of an entrepreneur burns in you, fill it with kerosene and let it blaze!”

Anna Pushkova

The session was also attended by Roman Khromchenko, Project Consultant at JSC Technopark of St. Petersburg, Co-founder of the Accelerator at St. Petersburg State University, and Egor Chuvarov, MegaFon Senior Product Manager. Moderator was Elena Sokolova, GSOM SPbU Master student, Employment Manager at Yandex.Practicum.

The St. Petersburg International Youth Labor Forum (available in Russian only) is a platform for discussions by representatives of the younger generation on the entire spectrum of issues in the field of work, as well as for a dialogue between young people and the state, business, trade unions, researches, and so on. The theme of the forum in 2022 was "Development and Career in the New Reality".

The VI St. Petersburg International Labor Forum is being held in a mixed format from 16 to 18 March 2022. The face-to-face part of the Forum takes place at three venues — the Taurida Palace, St Petersburg University and the Expoforum Exhibition and Convention Centre. The forum organizers are the Government of St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg University, the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of States Members of the Commonwealth of Independent States with the support of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of Russia, the Federal Service for Labor and Employment.