Polina and Maksym took the same AI course. Here’s what changed for them

Polina runs targeted advertising campaigns in the creative industry. Maksym manages social media and grows retail sales at a concept beauty salon in Kyiv. Both completed Google AI Essentials — a course run by the NGO ALLIANCE.GLOBAL as part of the Google AI Opportunity Fund.

Polina, targeted advertising specialist

Polina usually juggles several projects at once: a brief, audience analysis, a stack of copy variants for different segments, a client report — then round again. She came to the course not for a new profession, but for a specific result.

‘I wasn’t there to learn to code. I needed to work out how to get the routine stuff off my own plate — the things I do by hand every day,’ she says.

Before the course, AI was more of an occasional helper in her work — asking for a line of copy when she was stuck, or a quick idea. There was no system to it. What struck Polina most on the course was how plainly they explained things she’d always written off as ‘not really my thing’.

‘I started to understand the logic behind prompts — why one phrasing gets a decent result and another doesn’t,’ Polina says.

The first thing she overhauled was how she prepared ad copy for different audiences. What used to take an hour of manually working through wording now starts with a draft from AI, which Polina then fine-tunes to match the brand’s voice and the specific campaign. Next came the regular client reports and campaign analysis — work that always ate up time without needing any creative input.

‘The routine used to take everything out of me, and there was nothing left for experimenting. Now I can offer a client something a bit different, not just the safe option,’ Polina shares.

Maksym, social media manager at a beauty salon

Maksym came to the course with a specific business problem already in mind. At the salon where he works, clients regularly book complex colouring techniques — airtouch, balayage, full-head blonde — but bought their aftercare, lipid masks or heat protection somewhere else entirely. The salon had been missing out on a chunk of revenue for years, simply letting it walk out the door.

‘Using AI, I went through our whole product range and worked out which premium brands our clients actually wanted but that we didn’t stock. We brought them in — and it showed in sales straight away,’ Maksym says.

He overhauled the content just as thoroughly. Maksym shoots basic product photos, and AI turns them into dynamic videos and visuals, and writes up the active ingredients — everything from peptides to ceramides.

‘Sales of professional cosmetics through social media have grown so much that this side of the business now sometimes rivals what our top colourists bring in,’ Maksym says.

He’s currently building an AI bot to handle orders and enquiries, to cut the routine work down to almost nothing. Next, he’s planning to launch his own e-commerce venture and an AI-written blog, where he’ll dig into product formulas — pH balance, and the trichological properties of hair and scalp products.

Google AI Essentials doesn’t teach you to code or turn you into an IT professional — it hands you tools you can put to work in your day-to-day job straight away, whatever that job is: running ad campaigns or selling in a beauty salon.

To join the next intake of Google AI Essentials, or find out about ALLIANCE.GLOBAL’s other services — psychological support, humanitarian and legal aid — visit: mssg.me/allglobal.