Governance · Change · Implementation · KSA

Physics taught me how systems work. Law taught me why they break. Practice taught me what it takes to make them hold.

The real job is rarely what it says on paper: find the actual problem underneath the official one, build what's missing — and make sure people actually use it.

Siberia Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦
Evgeniia A. Gūshchina

Governance & Implementation

01

Why my background makes sense

Physics

Taught me to model systems and find the variable that actually matters. A physicist doesn't describe what they see — they ask what governs it. That habit never left.

Law

Taught me structure, risk architecture, and how governance fails in practice. Rules are not bureaucracy — they are the operating system of organisations. When they're wrong, everything built on top of them is fragile.

In-House Counsel — Five Years

The only lawyer in a holding of eight companies — construction, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, retail. Procurement, licensing, inspections, acquisitions — usually all at once, with no team and no second opinion down the corridor.

Independent Practice — Eight Years

My own consultancy since 2017, for businesses that need legal and operational cover without an in-house department. Manufacturing, construction, technology — including the legal and reporting structure of a UAE-registered entity.

IP & Data Governance — the Current Chapter

Since 2025 — designing and implementing IP and data governance inside a software company, from zero documentation to a working system. It confirmed what every earlier role suggested: most IP problems are governance problems, and most governance problems are systems problems.

None of it was a detour. Each layer exposed the limits of the one before — and project delivery is where they all converge.

Credentials & Languages
Intellectual Property Law
University of Pennsylvania — four-course specialization taught by Penn Law faculty: copyright, trademark, patent. Completed 2025.
IP as Business Strategy
EDHEC Business School — Intellectual Property as Competitive Advantage for Companies, 2026.
International IP Systems
WIPO Academy — specialized courses: Essentials of Patents · the Hague System for Industrial Designs, 2025.
Languages
Russian — native · English — professional · Arabic — Khalifa University specialization (Abu Dhabi, 2025), studied daily since.
02

Selected work

IP & Data Governance, Built from Zero

Tech · 2025 — ongoing

A software development company had no IP governance whatsoever. No chain-of-title. No asset registry. No policies. No awareness among developers that what they created had legal and commercial value. The brief was: draft IP policies.

What I found was that policies would be useless without the underlying system. The real problem wasn't legal — it was architectural and cultural. Developers didn't understand why it mattered; management saw IP as a legal formality, not as something the company actually owned and could lose. So I reframed the task and built two governance systems in parallel.

IP governance: a work-for-hire policy framework covering AI tool usage, open-source compliance, and SBOM tracking; an IP identification matrix across nine asset categories; a 16-module IP Management Center with traffic-light OSS classification, asset registry, and accounting integration; a contractor and client agreement suite built for real chain-of-title integrity; and a visual system map designed for developer onboarding, not for lawyers.

Data governance: the full regulatory package — processing policies, data protection regulation, incident management with a 24/72-hour notification structure, transfer procedures, anonymisation and destruction frameworks, and an external processor agreement built to banking-sector standards.

Knowledge base: practical guides written for how developers actually read — not for legal audiences. Throughout, the system was benchmarked against the practices of major Russian technology companies, and in several areas reached comparable levels.

The gap that remains — and where the work continues — is the distance between a designed system and a live one. Registries filled with real data. Sign-off waves with actual signatures. Processes that run without reminders. The policies ended up being the smallest part of the project.

* Confidential engagement, 2025 — ongoing. Client details withheld by agreement.

Securing a Major Government Infrastructure Contract

Public Procurement · Execution Under Pressure

A holding company needed a high-value government infrastructure contract. The tender landed on a Thursday evening; the deadline was Monday, the documentation wasn't ready, and the internal consensus was that it couldn't be done.

I put the package together over the weekend, coordinated across departments, and represented the company personally at regional and federal procurement offices to execute the agreement on time.

Contract secured. What outlasted the contract was the trust — earned through delivery under pressure, not through connections.

* Confidential engagement. Identifiers withheld.

Legal Operations Architecture Across a Multi-Entity Holding

Legal Ops · Systems Design

As the sole legal function for a diversified holding of eight operating entities — construction, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, retail — I managed the full spectrum of legal, compliance, procurement, and regulatory operations simultaneously. Not sequentially. At the same time.

The practical challenge was not legal knowledge — it was architecture. How do you build a system that handles eight entities with different regulatory profiles, different operational rhythms, and different risk structures — without constant firefighting? The answer was to design internal workflows that reduced dependency on reactive legal support and gave the business faster, more independent operational decision-making capability.

Internal legal and procurement workflows were adopted across the group, reducing dependency on external counsel and enabling faster decisions at the business level.
03

What I'm open to

Change & Implementation Specialist
Digital adoption · stakeholder alignment · rollout support · change communications
PMO / Project Governance Specialist
Delivery structure · reporting rhythm · risk visibility · decision logs · implementation control
Digital Transformation / Implementation Consultant
Process mapping · workflow design · operating procedures · practical adoption
AI Adoption / AI-enabled Workflow Specialist
Use-case mapping · human-in-the-loop processes · governance boundaries · team enablement
IP & Digital Assets Governance Specialist
Chain of title · asset registries · documentation systems · IP-aware operating processes
Project Manager — Tech / Governance / Implementation Workstreams
Where execution needs structure, clarity, and disciplined follow-through
Geography: Saudi Arabia · GCC · open to relocation.
Environment: Technology companies, transformation teams, PMO functions, innovation programmes, and Vision 2030–aligned organisations where new processes, governance systems, and adoption structures need to be built or strengthened.
What I bring: Systems thinking, legal and governance fluency, implementation discipline, change sensitivity, and the ability to work in ambiguous environments where the brief is incomplete and the real problem still needs to be discovered.

I am especially interested in roles and projects where technology, governance, people, and adoption meet — not only where a system needs to be designed, but where it needs to become part of how people actually work.
04

Why Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is a long-term professional direction for me.

My connection with the Kingdom began personally, through genuine interest and respect. Over time, it became more than admiration. It became a serious professional orientation.

What draws me to Saudi Arabia today is the scale of practical transformation taking place across technology, institutions, services, infrastructure, and human capability — and the discipline required to turn ambition into systems that work.

This is the kind of environment I want to prepare for carefully.

My background is strongest where structure, people, technology, and adoption meet: project governance, change implementation, AI-enabled workflows, IP and digital assets governance, documentation systems, and operating processes.

I am not looking at Saudi Arabia as a place to approach casually. I am learning Arabic, strengthening my project management foundation, and building a clearer professional profile because I believe any meaningful place in another country should be earned through value, respect, lawful work, and contribution.

My goal is simple: to become useful in the right environment — especially where complex ideas need to become practical systems, and where implementation matters as much as vision.

05

Selected writing

See all writing →

Let's talk.

If you are building or improving a governance, implementation, PMO, AI adoption, or digital assets process — and my background seems relevant — feel free to reach out with the context, the organisation, and the problem you are trying to solve.

I respond best to substantive professional enquiries with a clear role, project, or business need.