I Am Results Oriented’

On January 18, 2026, Tatyana Komissarova celebrates her birthday. She is Head of the Laboratory of Educational and Project Solutions for CPD Programmes at HSE University, one of the architects of Russian marketing and business education, and a pioneer behind the country’s first MBA programmes. Today we talk about winners, business angels, and why personal reputation is becoming a leader’s key asset.

When the foundations of the market economy were only just taking shape in Russia, marketing and business education as an institution simply did not exist. There were no methodologies, no programmes, and no language in which business could speak about strategy, customers, and value. At such moments, the spotlight falls on people who do not adapt to the market, but create it. Tatyana Komissarova is one of them—an architect of the first specialised MBA programmes, an expert in strategic marketing, a start-up mentor, and an executive for whom results have always mattered more than form.

The Starting Point

In the year I finished school, my future seemed predetermined: the stage, music, singing. Winning the television talent contest ‘Hello, We’re Looking for Talent!’ in 1973 opened a direct path to the conservatoire. But a medical report crossed out that script. The profession around which an identity had started to form was suddenly closed off. It was a serious shock. I did not know what I wanted to do next in life, and on my family’s recommendation I chose psychology, and later social psychology at Moscow State University. That moment was my first managerial decision in life: to accept a constraint and find a new growth trajectory. In my final year I was lucky enough to secure an internship at the Institute of Psychology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and after graduating I was taken on by one of the academy’s laboratories—a closed laboratory working with border troops. In those years, getting into the Academy of Sciences was the ultimate dream for psychologists, because the work there was genuinely fascinating.

From Science to CPD Programmes

Working at the Institute of Psychology of the USSR Academy of Sciences gave me a rare kind of experience for that time—pure practice. Then came full-time postgraduate study. The best of the best studied and defended their theses at the Institute of Psychology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, including cosmonauts who chose psychology as their field. There was no other institute like it in the country. I was offered a specialisation in engineering psychology and occupational psychology in extreme conditions. I am not a technical person. At university, I had been trained to manage people. I lacked mathematical knowledge, so over the course of a year I filled in the gaps, studying mathematical game theory, mathematical analysis, and more. I do not regret it for a single second now, but at the time I felt absolutely miserable.

My dissertation focused on selecting people, based on psychological characteristics, for work ‘in a win-or-lose scenario.’ In game theory there is a branch called zero-sum games—that is precisely ‘win or lose.’ During my postgraduate studies, I examined strategy and tactics through the actions of successful military commanders and chess players. It was during this period that one of the key competencies that later shaped my career was formed: the ability to work with strategies under conditions of uncertainty and high stakes.

I successfully completed my postgraduate studies. But then I spent eight months unable to find a job in Moscow in my field of studies and eventually came to the Institute for Advanced Training of Workers in the Chemical Industry of the USSR, where there was position of a psychologist to train managers. It was sheer luck. That is how I entered continuing professional development. Even now, I prefer working with mature, self-aware adults who are focused on practical results. The most exciting part of that story was that, at the time, an informal group of psychologist-trainers formed at the institute, developing methodologies for business communication training. Two of them were my colleagues. Although I was much younger, I was invited to join the team. This was 1985. To give you a sense of context, training as we know it did not yet exist in the USSR, and our group was effectively laying the foundations of business communication training at a time when no one had even heard of it. We prepared for a long time, and with the start of Soviet perestroika in the mid-1980s moved into practice: new opportunities opened up for organisations—electing managers, deciding what to produce and whom to work with. I was already ready for the next step: working with adult managers, those whose decisions determined the fate of organisations.

And then things gathered pace. My friends from the Academy of the National Economy under the Government of the USSR were setting up a ‘travelling business school’ to train Soviet executives. They lacked a psychologist-trainer and invited me to join. There were ten of us on the team: economists, lawyers, and managers. We took on ten groups and worked every day, in a continuous flow, training Soviet executives in management. It was continuing professional education on the road. Thanks to the connections of one of our colleagues, we travelled to 25 regions of the country with our training programmes. We were received by regional party committees. Everything was entirely official. In order to be able to travel, at the beginning of 1989 I resigned from the Institute for Advanced Training of the Chemical Industry of the USSR and became an employee of a cooperative. Later, I travelled on my own. My last trip was just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was to Chişinău. I remember sitting in a hotel while a rally was taking place right under my windows. It was frightening. I had a small child in Moscow and elderly parents, and I decided that I would not travel any more. And at that very moment, I was invited, as a trainer well known across the USSR, to work at Moscow International Higher Business School (MIRBIS) at the Plekhanov Institute of the National Economy.

Marketing as a Turning Point

Throughout my life, there have been events that demanded extra effort and strain from me, in effect requiring me to change myself. Each time, this has led to growth on two levels: I developed as a person, and my professional competencies expanded. It is therefore no surprise that, having joined MIRBIS as a trainer, I very quickly became First Vice Rector. I was the person who launched the first specialised MBA programmes in Russia: the MBA in Finance in 1994, followed by the MBA in Marketing. I also enrolled as a student myself. It was a joint Business Management programme that included an internship in the United States, where I became deeply interested in marketing—particularly in consumer behaviour, a field in which my background as a psychologist was fully in demand. I brought a marketing textbook back from the USA to Russia and took it to Boris Solovyov, then-Head of the Marketing Department at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics and at that time the most influential marketing specialist in the country, saying that I wanted to defend a doctoral dissertation on consumer behaviour. Boris Solovyov looked at me attentively and replied that, with all due respect, marketing was an economic discipline and there would never be any place for psychology in it. That was when I decided to be a practitioner. The only thing I did was to develop my own original course in 1997 and submit it to a competition run by the National Training Foundation. It won second place and a cash prize. It was the first programme on consumer behaviour in Russia. I often tell this story to my students.

I deliberately decided to give up the defence of a doctoral dissertation in 1996 in favour of practice: the reputation of an expert and the ability to create working products proved more important. So, I took part in the launch of the Presidential Programme for the Training of Management Personnel in the Russian Federation in 1998, where I was responsible for selecting candidates for training and internships from across the country. Leonid Evenko and Sergey Filonovich were responsible for choosing programmes and selecting educational institutions, while I handled the competitive selection of candidates. Huge piles of application forms arrived from different regions, and on the basis of approved criteria I prepared recommendations for training and overseas internships. It was an interesting time. I still keep a photograph taken in Boris Nemtsov’s office on December 30, 1998. It shows a large group of men—members of the programme’s expert council and representatives of all the participating universities. And one woman in the foreground. That is me.

Business, Reputation, and the Long Game

In the early 2000s, I moved into entrepreneurship. By nature, I am neither a bureaucrat nor an administrator. I am a creative person. I always have many ideas. And when you understand how to create a product that people truly need, and how to generate demand for it, it is an incredible source of drive. Because, in essence, you can create a new need in a person. It becomes an element of social influence. I worked as a marketing consultant, opened a specialist executive search recruitment agency, and could have continued doing this for many years, had it not been for an invitation to return to the university—this time as an architect of new educational solutions. Yaroslav Kuzminov, then-Rector of HSE University, proposed creating a new school to teach marketing to adult learners. This is how the HSE Higher School of Marketing and Business Development came into being, and it remained a market leader for many years. The school’s initiative-driven research attracted the attention of the professional community, while its team of practitioners built a strong reputation, creating new and innovative products. I was the founder, dean, and team leader of this school from 2005 to 2020. In 2020, the school was integrated into the newly established HSE Graduate School of Business.

The key argument in favour of changing my field of activity was simple: long-term reputation. The university offered the opportunity not merely to earn money, but to leave an institutional legacy—to shape markets, standards, and schools.

And then came a new turn—innovation and start-ups.

Start-Ups and a Future-Oriented Mindset

Working with business angels and the start-up ecosystem, mentoring at the Skolkovo Foundation since 2012, and the hundreds of projects that have passed through expert evaluation have helped me shape another rare competency: the ability to identify a product’s core value and determine its potential market segment.

Today, all this experience has been converted into a systemic result: leading the Laboratory of Educational and Project Solutions for CPD Programmes, launching programmes that are new to the market, and focusing on the full cycle—from idea to sales. The idea of establishing this laboratory belongs to Andrey Lavrov, Senior Director of HSE University. There are high expectations from leadership and excellent opportunities for professionals.

The five new educational products created in less than six months for HSE University’s continuing professional development units are not a sign of educational activity, but of business efficiency. This is a strong indicator not only for an educational structure, but for any product-based business.

For me, Tatyana Komissarova, this is neither a life stage nor the end of the story. It is a logical continuation of the trajectory of someone who has always worked for results. In business, education, and marketing, in the end only what works remains.

January 18