Open to opportunities

Alena Farina

@alenafarina

Message

People Partner with 11 years building scalable people operations and employee experience.

United Arab Emirates

Message

What I'm looking for

I’m looking to lead people operations and employee experience end-to-end—partnering with leaders on org health, performance, engagement, and scalable HR systems—driving measurable improvements in satisfaction, retention, and growth.

I’ve built people processes and HR infrastructure for 11 years at Dodo Brands, a food tech company that scaled from a regional startup into a $1B+ global network across 26 countries. I joined when it was still early and left after it grew to 1,000+ office employees in 4 countries with a People team of 7.

As a People Partner, I owned the full employee lifecycle for 1,000+ people across Russia, Kazakhstan, UAE, and Georgia—from onboarding and performance through engagement, retention, and offboarding. I partnered directly with team leads and senior leaders on org health, team development, and people decisions.

I led People Operations and employee experience, including a team of 7 HR managers, improved office satisfaction from 4.3 to 4.8/5 in 2 years, and managed annual office and benefits budgets of 115M+ RUB. I also opened and scaled 6 offices and coworking spaces end-to-end, introduced medical insurance across 3 countries, and built HR service automation with a chatbot handling ~700 requests monthly and saving 50 team hours per month.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

People Partner

Dodo Brands

Nov 2020 - Oct 2025 (4 years 11 months)

Owned the full employee lifecycle for 1,000+ employees across Russia, Kazakhstan, UAE, and Georgia, partnering with team and senior leaders on org health and people decisions. Led people operations, improved office satisfaction from 4.3 to 4.8/5 in 2 years, opened and scaled 6 office/coworking spaces, and implemented HR automation (chatbot handling ~700 requests/month, saving ~50 team hours/month)

Employee Lifecycle Management People Operations Employee Engagement Benefits Administration Performance Management HR Service Automation HR Analytics Stakeholder Management Budgeting

People Operations Specialist

Dodo Brands

Nov 2018 - Nov 2020 (2 years)

Built employee experience, internal communication formats, and engagement initiatives for distributed teams, including large-scale corporate events (6,000+ online and 2,000+ offline participants). Launched wellbeing and community programs, introduced psychological support with 10–20% monthly usage, and built HR metrics, pulse surveys, and regular feedback loops.

Employee Experience Internal Communications Corporate Event Planning Community Building Psychological Support