Olga Ialovenko

Olga Ialovenko is the festival director and lead organizer of UAFest, and president of the Ukrainian Community of Lanark County — the volunteer non-profit that runs the annual Ukrainian festival at Riverside Park in Carleton Place, Ontario. She leads UAFest as a volunteer, the same as everyone else on the team.

She has been with the festival from the beginning. It grew out of a neighbourhood effort to help a Ukrainian family settle in Lanark County, and the first Ukrainian Fest Lanark County started from a garage sale in 2023. The Carleton Place Town Council has since designated the festival a culturally significant event, and in 2025 it welcomed more than 4,000 guests. In her own words: “We don't aim to be the biggest — we strive to be the most genuine and meaningful.”

Away from festival day she is a financial-literacy educator and a certified Rotary trainer. She also coordinates the Rushnyk of Unity – Rushnyk of Victory Pan-American Tour, a separate body from the festival's organizing committee, keeping its route, its host communities and the handoff from city to city moving.