Liliya Lepekhina

Founders, with my help you see whether your company’s system can handle the next big step before a crisis appears. For your confidence before a round, license, expansion, team growth, or an enterprise deal.

London Area, United Kingdom

About

A fintech founder says: "We want to get there. What needs to change in our company so we can get there without breaking along the way?" That's the question I work on. I help companies spot future constraints, risks, and weak points before they become visible problems. I look at the company as a whole system and try to understand what may stop it from growing, scaling, or adapting to the next stage. The goal is not to tell founders what decisions to make. The goal is to help them see things they may not see yet, so they can make better-informed decisions themselves. Contact: [email protected]

Experience

  • Organizational Strategy Analyst| Independent Organizational Research at Liliya Lepekhina
    Jan 2024 - Present · 2 yrs 7 mos

    I analyze fintech companies as systems to identify growth constraints, leadership dependencies, organizational risks, and the capabilities required for the next stage of growth. My work began through executive search assignments, where I repeatedly observed the same pattern: companies were trying to solve business and organizational problems through hiring. In many cases, the role itself was not the problem. The real issue was a mismatch between the company's stage of growth, leadership structure, operational complexity, and future requirements. Today I focus on helping founders and leadership teams understand: what may limit the company's next stage of growth where founder dependency is becoming a risk which organizational capabilities need to be built how leadership architecture needs to evolve as complexity increases which leadership roles, if any, are required to support that transition Areas of focus: FinTech Regulated industries Cross-border expansion (EU ↔ MENA) Leadership architecture Organizational growth constraints Founder dependency and scaling risks Approach: I do not start with the question: "What role should we hire?" I start with the question: "What must change in the system for the company to successfully reach its next stage of growth?"

  • Sourcer/Sales Manager at Home Credit and Finance Bank/Technical Support Officer at NDA
    Jan 2015 - Dec 2023 · 9 yrs

    Over time, I moved into recruitment and focused on senior hires in complex environments. That experience helped me understand how leadership roles are used as “patches” for deeper system problems. I worked on regulatory and legal leadership roles for fintech companies under real regulatory pressure, which gave me a close view of how regulation, risk and leadership interact. Today, I use that experience not to run hiring, but to diagnose whether a role is truly needed, or whether the system needs to change first.

  • International Sales Specialist at Ufanefteproduct
    Jun 2009 - Dec 2014 · 5 yrs 7 mos

    Here I learned to sell cold, when there was only a product, a laptop, telephony, and a notebook. I learned here to find buyers, build long-term trusting relationships with them, understand them by their voice, intonations, email messages, as well as through Zoom. Here, I greatly improved my emotional intelligence and began to develop my kinetic intelligence. Kinetic intelligence is when I understand how my counterpart reacts to my words and proposals based on their voice, facial expressions, and body language. It was a huge and successful experience.

  • Sales Specialist at Евросеть Ритейл
    Jul 2005 - Apr 2009 · 3 yrs 10 mos

    This workplace has become my starting point, a place where I was able to unleash my potential and my communication skills. Understanding how to approach and interact with clients, knowing when to speak and when to remain silent. Here, I learned to assert myself, present my product, handle objections, and make sales. From a modest and timid teenager, I transformed into a sales powerhouse, one of the best in our department.