About the author

My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya, and information management is my real passion. I was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR), and graduated from the University of Saint Petersburg with applied math and teaching majors since back then, there was no “computer science” major at all.

First being exposed to the Wonderful World of Data in March 1983, I loved it! This was a true love “at the first glance,” and I told myself that I wanted to work with data for the rest of my life. And so I did – so far. As of September 2019, marking my 36th year of being in the IT industry and never being unemployed (so far:)).  I got my Ph.D. in CS, which already existed by that time, from the same University in May 1995, and between my BS and Ph.D., got three children. The youngest one chose to follow her parent’s steps, and I feel quite amused each time I open my e-mail and see a note from her: Mom, how can I optimize this query?…

I love teaching, and although I never was a full-time teacher, I compensate for it by teaching everybody around me, sometimes against their will.

I worked in all industries you could imagine, but it looks like once you get to finances, you can’t get out! Among all my previous places of work, Enova definitely stands out. The five years I’ve spent there allowed me to reach a completely new level professionally, and also return to research and to presenting at conferences, which I haven’t been doing for over 15 years.

Starting from April 2016, I joined Braviant Holding, and now experience the wonderful world of startup unfolding… Love it, love adventure, love responsibilities, and love seeing the outcome of my technical decisions showing on the bottomline right away!

Update. Six and a half years later and three jobs later, it still looks like I can’t leave finances :), despite two attempts. Looking back to the time when I wrote this post, I am at a very new level again. And it has been a long time since the last time my daughter asked me “how can I optimize this query.” Now, she can do it better than I!

P.S. For those who came across this page searching for my personal blog, the latter one is located at https://hettie.family.