Age: 31

Based in: Moscow, Russia

Education: Moscow State University & University of Pennsylvania

Occupation: Founder & CEO – Alter

As soon as she had received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Moscow State University, Olga Kitaina knew that she wanted to become a practising psychologist. However, the additional education and supervision needed were too expensive for her at that time, so she worked as a project manager at the Compass Group marketing agency and then as a coordinator of the consulting staff at Formatta HR-company for a year in order to raise the funds.

In 2015, Kitaina, along with two of her university friends, set up the psychology centre ‘Landmark’. By 2017 they had 20 specialists, but Kitaina struggled to grow the business.

The idea for her company Alter came from Kitaina’s own difficulties in finding the perfect psychologist for her. She went through six psychologists before she found one she was comfortable with. “Even if it is difficult for me to find myself a therapist, what about people outside of this sphere?” Kitaina thought.

In early 2017, Kitaina embarked on a road trip along the west coast of the United States. While falling asleep in the passenger seat, she dreamt about a service, which was to carefully select qualified psychologists, and then, based on the client’s answers to several questions, “match” him or her with a specialist in a particular field.

In order to turn this dream into a reality, Kitaina went to the staff of the laboratory of counselling psychology and psychotherapy of the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education to discuss her idea. Through the laboratory, she met the programmer of JetBrains, Andrei Breslav, who was also asking the laboratory for advice on an idea of a similar service.

With a 5 million rouble financial backing of an angel investor, Kitaina and Breslav were able to create the first prototype of the Alter service, a Facebook bot that asked the client about their problems and advised a specialist from a database of 30 psychotherapists. This Facebook bot did not have a good conversion rate – many people took the test but did not find a psychologist, probably, Kitaina thought, because they were just curious. Therefore, they moved their questionnaire to the site, created their own booking system and took a 13-15 percent commission from the psychologists working with their customers.

There are rigorous checks for the psychologists working on Alter as in Russia private psychotherapy practice is not regulated or licensed in any way. The first stage involves checking qualifications, experience, and recommendations, then the level of empathy, basic knowledge of the psyche and human behaviour, professional attitudes and rules of work are tested. In the last stage, the psychologists have to solve a client’s case. In this way, customers can trust that with Alter they will be dealing with professionals.

The customers and psychologists are paired together by an algorithm developed by Alter together with specialists from the Psychological Institute. Only 30% of psychologists pass Alter’s testing.

At the beginning of the pandemic, in March 2020, there was a steep drop in the number of clients on the website. Kitaina understood that the pandemic would have an even greater impact on people’s mental health but that many would not have the financial means to access help so in April 2020 she launched open days where 600 free consultations were accessed. In this same month, Olga was nominated by Forbes’s 30 most promising Russians under 30, in the Social Practices category.

Kitaina also launched the podcast “I’m Listening to You,” in which a real client goes to see a psychotherapist. A day after its launch, the podcast was number one in the Society and Culture category and entered into the top 10 Russian podcasts on Apple Podcasts.

Not long after the success of the podcast, Kitaina’s customers gradually returned and the numbers continued to grow despite the pandemic. Kitaina has a theory that either people’s mental health was so bad that they were ready to spend money despite the economic uncertainty, or that they had just got used to and began to feel more confident in using therapy online.

The surge of media interest in Alter during the pandemic has allowed Kitaina to receive offers from corporate clients ready to pay for psychological consultations for their employees. The developer of the fintech platform Space307, the medical company BestDoctor, the developer of the Cardsmobile Wallet app and “one of the Russian IT giants” came forward to request cooperation with Alter. Kitaina hopes that the success of Alter and the use of therapy in the workplace will contribute to psychotherapy gradually ceasing to be a taboo topic in Russia.

Kitaina was a finalist in the 2021 Cartier Women’s Initiative, an annual international entrepreneurship program that aims to drive change by empowering women entrepreneurs. She explained to them that “In Russia we’ve had a lot of cultural traumas that make people reluctant to show their emotions. They have no knowledge of how to express themselves. Now that’s changing. People are starting to think more about their emotions and their mental health and be more openly vulnerable.”

In October of this year, Kitaina was a participant at the third Eurasian Women’s Forum in St. Petersburg, where she spoke as part of a panel on women leaders in international tech and innovation projects.

This month, she will participate in an online discussion organised by the European Venture Philanthropy Association (EVPA) on women’s impact on entrepreneurship.

Quote: “Our mission is to make effective and safe psychotherapy available to everyone.”