Ms Kazakpaeva began her career as a Revenue Service inspector in Almaty in 1999. In her 24 years in public service, she has headed seven units differing in personnel but similar in spirit; everyone was united by a professional commitment to making their country better and safer. Today, Ms Kazakpaeva is successfully running the Educational and Methodological Center of the State Revenue Committee of the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan. This centre provides specialist training for Customs Service employees and developing the competencies of state revenue authority employees on the three dimensions of comprehensive security. Ms Kazakpaeva is proud that the centre’s educational programmes on combating threats and using of abilities, skills and competencies effectively at borders are creating an environment supporting political and socio-economic growth. The leadership’s active cooperation and the participation of the centre’s employees in international donor programmes, such as those of BOMCA, the OSCE, USAID, GIZ and others, is helping to address the shortage of resources for passing on knowledge and best practices through cascade training at borders.

In the last two years, Ms Kazakpaeva has undergone ISO 21500-2014 project management certification, become an ICU Professional Coach, and been certified as a Trainer of Trainers for Profiling at international crossing points. All these achievements reflect her ambition to be an inspiring and motivating example of life-long learning. Bakhytgul also currently heads the ‘Motivation of public sector employees’ project within the context of the development of Kazakhstan’s National Project Management System. And to continue the influence of women on government reforms, she is also studying for an executive master’s degree in public administration at the National School of Public Policy, part of Kazakhstan’s Presidential Academy of Public Administration.

In 2022, as head of the participatory project ‘An integrated approach in supporting border security’ and its subsequent research, Ms Kazakpaeva attended the OSCE’s 32nd Staff Course for Women Leaders at its Border Management Staff College in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. There, she met OSCE Secretary General Ms Helga Maria Schmid, who is an inspiration to many women leaders. The knowledge and experience she gained helped her to develop a training simulator for Educational and Methodological Center staff, while the research she did on the course has informed her recommendations on managing the mixed migration flows that have been seen recently and fall under the political-military dimension of governments in many countries. Bakhytgul’s leadership qualities were also recognised on the course, where she was elected a Leader, which, she says, came with a lot of responsibility and was very exciting, and she continues to work and remain friends with colleagues and experts from the college to this day. At the end of the course, Bakhytgul was presented with a letter of gratitude for her outstanding achievements and flawless expertise.

As a mother of five children and a woman leader, Ms Kazakpaeva has achieved all these results thanks to time management, coaching and facilitation skills, NLP skills, healthy living, and so on. She says that it is important to start each day by overcoming your laziness and weaknesses. But the most important thing is the full support for all her initiatives that she gets from her family and close friends. In conclusion, Bakhytgul reminds us that steps taken in time change the course of your whole life!