Having earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from UT Dallas and started her own online business, alumna Olia Bosovik now has set her sights on opening doors for other budding entrepreneurs.
As assistant director of the UT Dallas Venture Development Center, Bosovik is helping develop and run new programs — two at the moment. The first is a formal incubator program, VDIP, a nine-month program designed to assist startup companies that have already launched and are making progress, grow to the next level. The second is a Mentors Office Hours program, which provides on-site mentors available to counsel startups at the VDC Monday through Friday.
“Most startups don’t know it all, and we are here to help,” Bosovik says. “I work with startups, mentors and local companies, helping with networking and collaboration, in order to offer win-win relationships. Interacting with knowledgeable people in their industries is crucial for startups at this stage.”
Bosovik grew up in Belarus, a small country south of Russia. Her parents moved to Texas, and she followed, at age 20.
“I really had no idea what I was doing then,” she says. “I wanted to go to college, but the education system is very different here. Back home, you go to school free. I realized I would have to work to earn money for college.”
Bosovik became a full-time sales assistant at Ted Baker, an upscale British clothier in NorthPark Center in Dallas. She worked there five years and was promoted up the ranks to assistant store director while also taking a full load of classes, first at Richland Community College, then at UT Dallas.
“I met people who were going to UTD who told me that it was a great school, really affordable, and I’d get a great education, so I decided to transfer,” she says. “I may have missed out on that ‘college life’ a little bit because I was working full time, but I don’t regret it.”
Bosovik excelled at UT Dallas, winning the Naveen Jindal School of Management’s first Outstanding Undergraduate Finance Student award and a Dean’s Excellence Scholarship twice. She graduated in 2012.
After graduation, Bosovik accepted a position as a senior credit risk analyst with Comerica Bank, where she worked two-and-a-half years. She also began graduate classes at UT Dallas, earning both an MS in accounting and an MBA in 2015.
“During my last semester of grad school, I had room for a sales class,” she says. “I took entrepreneurship and realized, ‘Oh my gosh,’ this is what I’ve always wanted — making a difference and working for yourself.”
During her last year of graduate school, Bosovik won a Rookie Preview sales competition.
Also, a team of which she was a member finished third in the 2015 UT Dallas Business Idea Competition, where students develop and present business startup ideas to a panel of judges. The team’s model, designated TravelHop, later emerged as Travabond, a budget-focused online travel site offering trip planning, management, booking and more for women traveling together.
“When I found out Mark Cuban was one of the competition’s judges, I was determined we would win,” Bosovik says. “He told us it was a good idea but said it wasn’t a very good business model. We made some adjustments.”
Today, Travabond is “on the shelf for the moment,” she says, as its co-founders either work full time, as she does, or are still students.
“I like the core idea of women and travel, and bonding and seeing the world together,” Bosovik says. “But we still have some work to do on the model, to make it viable.”
For now, Bosovik enjoys helping others achieve their entrepreneurial goals.
“I am the first face companies see and work with at the Venture Development Center and enjoy this great opportunity to help others grow,” she says.
“Olia is passionate about entrepreneurship and brings an enthusiasm that is difficult to replicate,” says Jeremy Vickers, executive director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which operates the Venture Development Center. “She possesses a core of knowledge in finance and accounting that lends itself to the coaching of new entrepreneurs.”
