Valentin Makarov
President, RUSSOFT Association

Valentin Makarov was born in April 16, 1955 in Leningrad (now St Petersburg), Russia. Since 1978 until 1985 he had been working in Defense Industry as electronics engineer. Then he entered Leningrad Polytechnic Institute where began his carrier of manager of International Relations, being nominated deputy-vice Prorector.

As an investment policy expert he had been working in joint ventures and national business Consulting firms. In parallel, in 1995 he was elected to the position of the Executive Director of the Association of Free Economic Zones of St Petersburg. That change in the carrier was related to the active position of Mr.Makarov in designing and implementing a number of FEZ projects in 1994-1996.

In 1996-2000 Valentin Makarov had been working as the Deputy Chairman of Foreign Relations Committee in the Administration of St Petersburg. Under his responsibility a number of corporate Associations has been created (Assoication of Leasing Companies, Association of High Tech Exporters). He was also the initiator of Fort Ross Consortium which was established in September 1999.

Within 3 years Fort Ross has strongly grown up, from a Consortium of 10 local companies into a strong amalgamation of 30 companies. Since 2001 Mr.Makarov has been the Chairman of the most important Conference on outsourcing on all the territory of the former Soviet Union - Russian Outsourcing and Software Summit (formerly Software Outsourcing Summit, www.soft-outsourcing.com).

Because of such a success, in March 2002 Valentin Makarov was elected President of the National Software Development Association. He has organized the office of NSDA in Moscow, has given the new name RUSSOFT and together with Fort Ross has arranged a number of successful international marketing events.

In December 2003 he was elected to the Board of APKIT (the Association of Computer and IT Industry) where got the position of the Chairman of the Software Development and Export Committee. Mr.Makarov was representing APKIT at the ceremony of admittance of APKIT to WITSA (World IT&Service Alliance, www.witsa.org) in December 2003 in Vietnam and he has also signed the Cooperation Agreement between APKIT and BITKOM in March 2004 in Hannover.

In March 2004 Valentin Makarov returned back to Fort Ross, which is becoming the most important organization of software developing companies in the Russian speaking territory.

After the merger of Fort Ross Consortium with the National Software Development Association in May 2004 - the unified Association took the name of RUSSOFT. Valentin Makarov became the President of RUSSOFT Association, the Nation wide Association of largest and most technically competent software developing companies from Russia, Byelorussia and Ukraine with Head-quarters in Saint-Petersburg, Russia.