Margarita Pakhotina

I am a career psychologist working in the psychodynamic approach. Beyond the career question itself, we look at what lies behind it: recurring patterns at work, whose expectations you are trying to meet, and what stops you from choosing and getting moving. Alongside this we do a lot of practical work: the job market, positioning, job hunting, starting your own business. Here my background in product management and bringing products to market comes in handy.

About 70% of my clients are women aged 27–40 working in IT and deep tech, with 7–15 years of experience. They are building portfolio careers or launching their own products, companies or practices. Common requests:
— finding a job abroad;
— launching a practice or company abroad;
— reinventing yourself and your career after emigrating;
— losing interest in your work and not knowing what you want to do;
— moving from academia to industry, or from employment to working for yourself.

I help you work out what you want and what you can do, shape that into a direction and a clear pitch for the market, and take the first steps. I work online: either a single 90-minute in-depth session or ongoing work once a week or every two weeks.

Psychology and counselling

2023 — present: private practice in career and business psychology. Individual work, groups, teams, sessions for company employees.

2021 — present: career counselling and mentoring for managers and senior specialists.

More than 200 clients and 1,500+ hours of practice. Regular supervision and peer supervision; member of professional associations.

Business

2024 — present: advising teams on bringing tech products and companies to market, including international markets.

2022–2024: head of product, then co-founder of a travel-tech start-up. Product, sales, fundraising.

2021–2022: launched a start-up in two Asian markets; the team grew from 10 to more than 140 people.

2020–2021: launched an educational product from scratch at one of Russia’s top five IT companies and built a team of 30.