BORDERLANDS FOUNDATION

We want to help Ukraine create a powerful national story that serves as the bedrock for a thriving, prosperous, and free society, which also firmly establishes its right to exist as a sovereign nation in the international community.

Our main priorities as an organization are to promote Ukraine through:

Enabling Ukrainian Leaders to Build a Unified National Identity
Building a Global Brand for Ukraine based on the History of the War
Attracting International Investment for Ukraine
Developing a Academy Top Research Center for Studying the Ukraine War
Supporting the development of Ukrainian Identity and History
Opportunities to develop leadership lessons for Global Leaders through the Study of Ukrainian History

History Center

In partnership with the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, The Borderlands Foundation will create a history center to document the story of Ukraine’s struggle for independence from Russia, with an initial emphasis on the events since Russia’s Full-scale invasion in February of 2022. The focus of the center will be documenting the stories of those who fought in the war - from President Zelensky and the national leadership, all the way down to the regular soldiers and Ukrainians from all walks of life who were impacted by the war.

Our goal is to educate the future intellectual elite and leadership of Ukraine on the importance of, and how to create a history from this war that empowers and unifies the Ukrainian people with a strong, unified, national identity. The Executive Director of the Center, Samuel P.N. Cook will be a Guest Professor at the School of Journalism in Kyiv Mohyla Academy, teaching a course to the Journalism Master’s Students on War and StoryTelling. Based on his position as the lecturer on war and storytelling, we have office space for our center from Kyiv Mohyla Academy. The Staffing for the center will come from core staff that we hire, but the bulk of our work will be done with recruited students from the Journalism, Sociology, and History departments in the school. We will train these students to both create documentary interview footage, translations and transcripts in English and Ukrainian, and also write articles

From the students in Kyiv Mohyla Academy, we will also create and train a team of directors, editors, and writers who can create documentary films, edit and produce long-form audio podcasts, and write articles and long form historical pieces. The Aim of our history project will be to inform the Western World about the heroism and struggle of Ukrainians throughout the war, and after it ends, to build their national identity and story. We believe the Ukrainian history they build from this war and beyond can serve as the foundation for building a modern state that can re-inspire the world’s faith in democracy and an open society.

Our primary research material will give us an extensive library of both audio and video interviews with people who lived through and experienced the war across all walks of society. The material that we gather will be a repository of primary research materials that we will make available to documentary film-makers, historians, and journalists. In return for use of our material, we will ask for donations or royalties for the material we create.

Humanitarian Aid:

While writing our history, we want to feature those who were most impacted by the war in all of our content. So an article that tells the story of a battle will also give those who read the story the opportunity to donate money to the families of the Ukrainian soldiers or innocent civilians who were killed or wounded in the battle, or to assist those whose property or livelihood was destroyed in the fighting. We have already built an app that lists the stories of people who have been impacted by the war. The app allows anyone to donate directly to a family in need who has been impacted by the war through a non-profit and receive a full tax write-off.

Background:

The Borderlands Foundation was founded by Samuel P.N. Cook, who is a former U.S. Cavalry Officer. He served 2 tours as a Cavalry Officer in Iraq, where he helped write the Regimental History for COL McMaster’s 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment’s famous campaign in the battle of Tal Afar. Before he left the Army, he got a Master’s in Russian History at NYU so he could serve as a Russian and Ukrainian History Professor at West Point. After he left the Army, he founded James Cook Media in Ukraine that specializes in documentary film-making, podcasts, and digital marketing. He also Co-Founded a Tech Startup that was selected for LA TechStars in 2022 based out of Kyiv, Ukraine. He has lived for the last 4 years in Ukraine with his wife Kateryna.

Board Members

Andrey Dligach - Head of Advanter Group, Doctor of Economics, strategist, futurologist and visionary; founder of the Board business community, co-founder of the Center for Economic Recovery, SingularityU Kyiv, FreeGen, Investudio. Investor and ideologist of ecosystems and technology startups.

Marvin Liao - Marvin is a Partner at Diaspora Ventures, he was previously a Partner global Venture Firm, 500 Global. He Invests in Digital Media, Enterprise SaaS, Marketplace, Mobile, AdTech/MarketingTech, Digital Health, Internet of Things, and Fintech startups. Formerly an experienced client-facing senior executive in the media and technology space in both large and startup growth companies, having managed large multifunctional teams across multiple countries.

He has P&L management experience and was most recently responsible for 100% YoY revenue growth while running a business unit and building new sales channels in EMEA and the Emerging Markets regions for the last 4 years at Yahoo. A 10.5 year veteran of Yahoo, Marvin has held roles in the various departments of sales, business development, ad operations, and marketing. Most of his roles were regional or global management roles giving him extensive experience across Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States in his career at the company. Marvin presently serves on the boards/advisory boards of several internet advertising and ad technology companies across the globe. He is a frequent speaker at many digital marketing and startup conferences.