Olesia Zhylko

Olesia Zhylko is a Spatial Planning Consultant in the USAID Governance and Local Accountability (HOVERLA) Activity.

She has more than 17 years of professional experience in local government, focusing largely on land management and urban planning documentation, and holding a managerial position for nine years. Her areas of expertise include state cadaster data management, spatial planning documentation, regional development, land market and monetary valuation, and capacity building.

In 2006, Zhylko began working at the Lyubeshiv Department of the Volyn regional branch of the Center DZK, where she was responsible for land relations and land cadaster issues.

Three years later, in 2009, she as assumed the position of Head of the Department of the Lyubeshiv Representative Office of CJSC “Scientific and Production Enterprise” Technical Bureau of Cadastre,” where she handled the development of land management projects, technical documentation, and the coordination of normative and monetary valuation.

More recently, Zhylko has assumed responsibility for preparing economic and social development programs for Lyubeshiv Town Council. Here, she has carried out training sessions for government officials in Volyn Oblast on investment attraction and local economic development, with a particular emphasis on the strategic and spatial planning aspects in investment mobilization. In addition, she has prepared several projects through grant competitions under the “Kusanone” program of the Government of Japan and the Interreg NEXT Programme Poland-Ukraine 2021-2027. Another of her achievements was implementing the participatory budget in the Lyubeshiv community, recognized as a “Best Practice in Local Self-Government” in the 2020 competition. She also obtained a diploma from the Ministry for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine.