Tech Entrepreneur and Philanthropist Victoria Livschitz Donates WSOP Winnings to Charities
WHITEFISH, Mont., Nov. 24, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- RightOnTrek CEO, serial entrepreneur and newcomer to tournament poker, Victoria Livschitz donated her $30,000 in World Series of Poker (WSOP) winnings to charities and vowed to contribute all future earnings to philanthropic causes.
The winnings come from six of the 12 events she competed in at this year's WSOP, including: 17th in the Ladies Championship; 26th in the $1,500 NLHE Shootout; 104th in the $3K 6-Handed NLHE; 404th in the $1,000 Double Stack; sixth in the $400 Daily Deepstack at Aria; and a first-place finish in the $400 WSOP Daily Deepstack.
"Poker is a relatively new hobby of mine," explained Victoria. "While I played small stakes, live cash games for a few years, it wasn't until COVID lockdown that I took a more serious interest in the game. I decided to play at the [WSOP] this year at the last moment, as a much-needed vacation, and frankly didn't expect to get this deep in so many events."
Victoria grew up playing chess in Lithuania, where she won the title of Women's Youth Champion at the age of 17. Three years later she immigrated to the United States and co-founded a professional chess academy while completing her degree in mathematics and computer science. All this comes in handy in poker.
Over the next three decades, Victoria became a Silicon Valley technologist and successful serial entrepreneur. From 2004-2005 she was a member of a small technical team at Sun Microsystem's Labs that built SunGrid, the world's first commercial Cloud Computer. In 2006, Victoria founded Grid Dynamics (Nasdaq: GDYN), an industry-first engineering company in the nascent field of cloud computing, which became a leader in digital transformation and went public 15 years later, in 2020.
Victoria is also an avid backpacker that completed the iconic 221-mile High Sierra John Muir Trail, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, and trekked across Patagonia, Peru, and Alaska. Her latest startup is an outdoors recreation tech company, RightOnTrek, founded in 2018 to make wilderness adventures more accessible to everyone. Last year, she moved to Northern Montana to be closer to the mountains and establish her company's new headquarters near Glacier National Park.
Philanthropy is an important facet of Victoria's professional and personal focus, particularly in the areas of sustainability, environmental protection, and accessibility of the great outdoors. She and her company are frequent sponsors of charities in her community.
The $30,000 of Victoria's WSOP winnings went in equal parts to two organizations: Glacier Institute, who will use the funds to bolster their youth education programs and help with the restoration of the Big Creek Youth Camp, and Flathead Valley Ski Education Foundation (FVSEF) to help further their mission of promoting athletic, academic and personal excellence to local youth through educational and competitive programs in skiing and ski racing.
Victoria looks forward to more poker battles in the future, both to enjoy the game and add supplemental funding for her philanthropic work: "Poker is an exciting intellectual challenge and stress relief. Being able to use the winnings for charity is a great motivator to study and compete harder".
Media contact: Wyatt Anthony, Senior Outdoors Recreations Public Relations Specialist at RightOnTrek. pr@rightontrek.com (860) 271-9858
View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tech-entrepreneur-and-philanthropist-victoria-livschitz-donates-wsop-winnings-to-charities-301431378.html
SOURCE RightOnTrek
