She is the founder and CEO of MunaiGaz Engineering Group, a Kazakh oil and gas conglomerate.
She was raised in Moscow, where her father, engineer Yerkin Berkaliev, was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party under Mikhail Gorbachev.
[6][7] After leaving Oxford, Ashkenazi worked at investment banking firms, including Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley in London and ABN AMRO in Hong Kong.
[6] The couple separated in 2004 and divorced in 2007, but she retained his last name, albeit with a different spelling due to a typo on her Russian passport.
Her parents are both sworn atheists as members of the Communist Party, but her father is of Muslim background and Goga is Jewish through her maternal grandmother.
[4][6] She is close friends with Prince Andrew, Duke of York,[3][6] as well as banker Nathaniel Rothschild, real estate developer Nick Candy, Duran Duran band member Nick Rhodes and Lord Edward Spencer-Churchill.