Running Mid-Stride
In 1994, while Silicon Valley was still debating dial-up speeds, Emmy Gengler landed in the former Soviet Union to build software teams from scratch. She wasn't following a trend. There wasn't one to follow. She was creating the infrastructure - organizational, technical, and interpersonal - that would eventually become a 300-person global firm called Softjourn, headquartered quietly in Fremont, California, with R&D centers in Ukraine, Poland, and Brazil.
That's the shape of a career built on intuition over consensus. Emmy didn't arrive at a tech unicorn and climb the org chart. She co-founded a company in 2000 alongside Jeff Kreuser, at a time when "nearshoring" wasn't yet a buzzword and Ukraine was an unknown quantity in enterprise software circles. She knew what she was building before the market caught up to it.
Today, Softjourn is the name behind software that moves money, manages venues, and streams content for organizations that prefer competence over fanfare. Its clients don't show up in press releases about Softjourn - they're too busy selling tickets, processing payments, and delivering media at scale. That anonymity is, in a strange way, the proof of the product.
"People have infinite ideas. Softjourn gives them life."- Emmy Gengler, CEO & Co-Founder, Softjourn
What Softjourn Actually Does
The elevator pitch for Softjourn is custom software development. The real pitch is harder to summarize, because the work spans three industries that rarely appear on the same business card: fintech and payments, event ticketing and venue management, and media and entertainment technology.
Pick a live event you attended in the last decade. There's a reasonable chance the ticketing platform, venue mapping tool, or access control app running in the background was built or maintained by a Softjourn development team. The company's ticketing work for Bruno Mars' 2016 world tour tells you what "at scale" means in this context: over one million tickets sold in a matter of hours, without the infrastructure folding under the weight.
On the fintech side, Softjourn builds payment security infrastructure, digital wallets, blockchain integrations, real-time payment systems, and prepaid card solutions. These are the layers beneath the layers - the code that runs before a transaction reaches the user's phone screen. In media and entertainment, the firm handles streaming applications, video on demand platforms, second-screen apps, and live streaming architecture.
300+ engineers ■ Ukraine, Poland, Brazil R&D centers ■ Fremont, CA headquarters ■ Inc. 5000 honoree 2023 ■ $4.7M+ annual revenue ■ Est. 2000
Where the Work Lives
Softjourn's work sits at the intersection of domains where the technical and the experiential collide. The company doesn't position itself as a generalist dev shop - it builds deep in specific verticals and then becomes the expert its clients can't replace.
The Long Road to Fremont
Emmy Gengler studied Management Information Systems at the University of Wisconsin, then added an MBA from the Monterey Institute of International Studies - now part of Middlebury. That combination of business and systems thinking would define her approach to running a company: not purely technical, not purely commercial, but persistently both.
Her first major professional move - relocating to the former Soviet Union in 1994 - wasn't a gap year experiment. She went there to lead system integration work, and stayed to build something more durable: a venture-backed IT and business consulting firm in Kyiv, managing virtual development teams across the U.S., Russia, and Eastern Europe. This was before Slack, before distributed-first became fashionable, before most Western companies had any framework for managing engineers across ten time zones.
She was building that framework in real time, learning by doing, and carrying those lessons back to California when she and Jeff Kreuser co-founded Softjourn around the turn of the millennium. The company started as a network of partner companies based in Ukraine. The model was already there. Emmy had already lived it.
How She Runs It
Emmy has been open about how she allocates her time: 25% on planning, 25% on client work, 10% on administration, and 40% on new business development. That last number is unusual. Most CEOs of companies her size spend far less on direct business development - that's what sales teams are for. Emmy treats new business not as a function she oversees but as a discipline she practices.
Her leadership philosophy centers on people as the primary asset - which sounds generic until you watch how she operates in crisis. When Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, she had contingency plans in place. When the full-scale invasion came in 2022, Softjourn didn't just survive it. The company grew by 10%.
"Clients engage experts in the industry to help give them a leg-up on the competition."- Emmy Gengler
During the 2022 invasion, Emmy offered Ukrainian employees flexibility, financial assistance, and relocation options. Softjourn employees - collectively - purchased ambulances and medical supplies for Ukrainian defenders. The company and its people donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Ukrainian organizations. Emmy was quoted in TechCrunch, featured in Euronews, and appeared in WomenLoveTech for her response to the crisis - not for the publicity, but because the story was too unusual not to tell. A software company that grows during a war and buys ambulances.
She also established a Softjourn Leadership School internally - a structured professional development program designed to build the next generation of leadership within the company. The idea that great companies grow their own leaders, rather than exclusively recruiting from outside, shapes her approach to long-term talent strategy.
How Emmy Allocates Her Time
Beyond the Company
Emmy has served three terms on the board of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, where she also led the IT Committee and served as Treasurer for two years. That's not a ceremonial title - it's active representation of Ukraine's technology sector at a time when that sector was fighting to establish its reputation on the global stage.
She holds a Certified Outsourcing Professional designation from the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP), and has served as a board member of PMI's Services & Outsourcing Special Interest Group. Since 2019, she's been on the Leadership Committee of How Women Lead, an organization focused on advancing women into senior roles.
Her advocacy for female leadership in tech isn't just board membership. Softjourn itself employs a significant number of women in high-level management positions - a fact Emmy has cited as a reflection of a deliberate cultural priority, not a quota or an afterthought.
Five Things Worth Knowing
Emmy moved to the former Soviet Union in 1994 - before email was mainstream - to do system integration work. Most professionals were moving in the opposite direction.
Softjourn's ticketing platform processed over 1 million Bruno Mars tickets in a matter of hours during his 2016 world tour. The platform didn't flinch.
Emmy allocates 40% of her time to new business development - an unusually high share for a CEO of a 300-person firm. Most CEOs leave this to the sales team.
During Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Softjourn grew by 10%. Emmy's team also collectively purchased ambulances and medical supplies for Ukrainian defenders.
Softjourn maintains R&D centers in Ukraine, Poland, and Brazil - a global footprint built without venture capital, one client at a time.