The retail world is changing in ways that are easy to feel and hard to name. What once depended on paper, repetition, and hurried guesswork now runs on data and software that quietly reorder the workday. Shelves know when they are empty. Checkouts get faster without anyone noticing. Forecasts stop being hunches and start being probabilities. When technology is used with care, the effect is not to push people aside but to give them back the part of the job that matters most: helping customers, solving problems, and feeling useful at work.
This is the space where Serhii Malyshev has chosen to build. He lives in Deerfield, Illinois, and grew up in Kyiv. His path did not begin in code. It began with a master’s degree from Loyola University Chicago that focused on international law and alternative dispute resolution. Later, he earned certifications in project management and quality assurance, and he completed a diploma program in Business Analysis from Harvard Business School Online. The thread that connects these steps is not a single industry. It is a habit of looking for structure, then returning to people. He speaks plainly about his aim: “My vision is to use technology to make essential services more reliable, efficient, and human-centered.”
The idea that sparked his current retail project did not come from a slide deck. It came from nearly a year on the sales floor and inside pharmacy operations, where he watched workers lose time and energy to tasks that seemed designed for machines, not people. Price tags were changed by hand. Paper checklists were carried from station to station. Every hour spent on those chores was an hour not spent with customers. “These processes slow down operations and increase the risk of burnout,” he says. The observation is simple, and it is human. It values attention as a scarce resource and morale as a measurable outcome.
His answer is to bring small, practical tools into the flow of work. Digital checklists replace clipboards. Real-time task tracking replaces end-of-shift memory. Electronic shelf labels replace thousands of tiny manual updates. None of this is flashy. It does not need to be. The goal is to move effort away from rote tasks and toward the parts of the job that create trust. “I aim to lead IT projects that don’t just meet client requirements, but genuinely solve real problems for end users,” he says. In his usage, the phrase end user never sounds abstract. It means the pharmacy tech who has five minutes to spare and a line that will not wait. It means the associate who can greet a customer instead of filling out one more box on a form.
His habit of seeking clarity shows up in the way he diagnoses problems. He uses what he calls the 4-Why Rule. When something breaks, he asks why at least four times, peeling back convenient answers until he reaches a cause that can be fixed, not just managed. The method is patient and stubborn. It resists the pressure to ship a fix today that will create a different failure tomorrow. It also reflects the spirit of his training in negotiation, where listening is not a courtesy but a tool that changes outcomes.
Malyshev’s portfolio beyond retail points in the same direction. In a neonatal intensive care setting, he helped teams improve nutrition tracking and care protocols, so clinicians could make faster and better informed decisions for the most vulnerable patients. In another project, he worked on a platform that expanded access to care for underserved communities and made the experience less confusing for both providers and patients. He also managed a Canadian sports technology effort that used a wearable device and a companion app to surface live training metrics, giving athletes and coaches a way to see what the body was doing in the moment. The common thread is not a specific technology stack. It is a belief that tools should reduce friction and raise comprehension.
He carries equal respect for the people who helped him form these views. Early in his IT career at Glorium Technologies, he received sharp feedback from senior leaders who saw potential and did not soften the truth. He credits that period with teaching him to take responsibility, to think in systems, and to measure success by whether the work actually helps someone. Education gave him vocabulary and frameworks. Mentorship gave him a standard for conduct that he still applies when leading teams across roles and time zones.
When he talks about the future of retail, he does not reach for buzzwords. He talks about small gains that compound. One paper form removed. One task that updates itself. One worker who finishes a shift feeling a little less drained and a little more proud. He believes the long arc of IT and AI will favor leaders who can translate complexity into daily routines that feel humane. That belief lives inside a short sentence he repeats often: “Clarity creates confidence.” In practice, clarity looks like a store manager who can see the day at a glance, a technician who never wonders if a step was missed, and a customer who gets help before having to ask twice.
There is also an ethical current running under his plans. Data can be used to watch or to understand. Automation can erase judgment or it can make room for it. He prefers the second path. He sees technology as part of culture, not separate from it, and he frames each deployment as a choice about what kind of workplace we want to build. The tools that win, in his view, are the ones that shorten the distance between a person and the outcome they care about.
If the last decade trained retailers to collect data, the next will train them to put it to work in a way that restores attention to where it counts. The winners will be the teams that treat software as an ally, not a master, and that measure progress by how much time was returned to people. Serhii Malyshev’s mission fits that future. He takes the large forces reshaping the industry and translates them into changes that a clerk, a pharmacist, or a store manager can feel in a single shift. The promise is modest and profound at once. Less confusion. More time for the work only humans can do.
