How Tatiana Tylosky Uses Decision Frameworks to Build Better Companies

An Interdisciplinary Path to Clearer Thinking

MDA alumni Tatiana Tylosky’s path has been interdisciplinary from the beginning, but very intentionally so. After studying at NYU’s Gallatin School, she gained practical experience working in startups, learning how to build, how to code, and how to make decisions even when something wasn’t clear. 

“[Gallatin] was honestly a magical experience. It gave me exposure to a wide range of ideas, ways of thinking, and people. At the same time, like most undergraduate programs, it wasn’t designed to teach you how to operate in real-world uncertainty, which is what I became much more interested in over time.”

That’s what made Minerva’s Master in Decision Analysis (MDA) so compelling. To sharpen her decision-making skills, Tatiana joined Minerva’s MDA program, giving her the ability to step back into academic thinking, but this time with context. She learned how to read and evaluate real academic research again, how to structure arguments properly, and how to apply decision frameworks to real case studies.

“It was one of the first times I felt like academia and real-world execution were actually speaking to each other,” said Tatiana.

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Structuring Work with OpenLedger 

Throughout her career in consulting, startups, and clinical research, Tylosky noticed a recurring problem of people struggling to define or price work properly. On one side, you have contributors doing endless iterations without clear boundaries, often under vague agreements. On the other, you have clients paying retainers or monthly fees without receiving clearly defined outcomes. 

Having been on both sides of that dynamic, this led to Tatiana’s founding of OpenLedger, a platform that structures work around deliverables instead of ambiguity.The idea is simple, but surprisingly rare in practice. OpenLedger helps define what is being delivered, ties payment directly to that, and creates explicit boundaries around what is included and what is not.

“It takes the scope-of-work model used in large organizations and makes it usable for individuals and smaller teams,” Tylosky explained. The system ensures contributors are paid fairly for defined work and clients receive verifiable outputs. When that structure is in place, a lot of unnecessary friction disappears.

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How the MDA Sharpened Her Thinking
Tylosky credits the MDA program with teaching her how to create structure under uncertainty. Instead of ignoring ambiguity, she learned to break problems down and design around them.

In traditional education, you’re often rewarded for being correct. In practice, especially as a founder, you’re operating without complete information most of the time.The MDA program teaches participants to break down problems, identify ambiguities and design around ambiguities versus ignoring it.

“I now read academic papers regularly, extract what matters, and apply it directly to what I’m building. That wasn’t something I could do effectively before. So for me, Minerva wasn’t about theory, it was about reconnecting rigorous thinking with real-world application,” explained Tatiana. 

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When Ambiguity Becomes Friction
When asked for advice, Tatiana emphasized the importance of defining the problem correctly. A skill often underestimated, she believes most operational failures stem from unclear expectations, vague ownership and poorly defined work, rather than a lack of talent.

Her main mindshift suggestion is to stop accepting ambiguity as the default. While many people assume messy work structures are normal, she identifies them as the root cause of inefficiency,  conflict and burnout.

“Clear systems don’t limit people, they allow them to actually do their best work,” said Tatiana.

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Building What Comes Next
Tylosky currently focuses on two areas. First, she continues to build OpenLedger's infrastructure for deliverable-based work and fair compensation,Second, she works on data sovereignty in Latin America and other markets. Through her work with Farmacon Global and Rare DIEM, she’s seen firsthand how incentives in clinical research can become misaligned and how urgency can create conditions where value is extracted from emerging markets without building long-term, equitable systems.

For Tatiana data sovereignty means people should own their data and countries should control the systems that govern it.

“This isn’t about politics, it's about structure and incentives. If systems are designed in a way that consistently moves value away from the people generating it, that pattern will repeat itself.”

Every other year, Tatiana runs Rare DIEM, an international conference focused on clinical research and data sovereignty, where she brings stakeholders together to discuss better models and practical approaches.

If you’re ready to move beyond vague frameworks and start making sharper, more intentional decisions, Minerva’s MDA offers a rare bridge between academic rigor and real-world execution, exactly what alumni like Tatiana describe.

Learn more here. MDA applications close June 10, 2026.

And to follow what Tatiana is building, check out:

• OpenLedger
• Farmacon Global (LinkedIn)
• My data sovereignty work and talks

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