Speakers

Zuzana Čaputová served as President of the Slovak Republic from 2019 to 2024 – becoming the first woman ever elected to this office in the history of the country and the wider region. During the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and a period of deep social polarization, she led Slovakia with an emphasis on humanity, empathy, and democratic values. She consistently advocated for the protection of democracy, human rights, and the environment.

Under her leadership, the Presidential Office became the first climate-neutral public institution in Slovakia. She initiated several systemic reforms, including the establishment of a network of intervention centers supporting victims of domestic violence.

After completing her term, she served as a visiting lecturer at Stanford University in the United States. She has received twelve international awards and six state honors recognizing her contribution to democracy and values-based leadership.

Dominik studied history education at the Faculty of Education in Hradec Králové and worked as a teacher for several months before making his mark in history as an ice hockey goaltender. The NHL.com portal named him the greatest goaltender ever to play the game. He won the Stanley Cup twice, received the Hart Trophy twice as the NHL’s most valuable player, and was named the league’s best goaltender five times. At the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, he led the Czech national team to a gold medal.

In 2001, he founded Hašek’s Heroes, an organization that continues to support children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, helping them develop both their hockey skills and personal growth.

In recent years, he has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine and a critic of Russian politics. Despite receiving death threats from former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, Dominik has remained steadfast in his stance and continues to speak out against the participation and promotion of Russian athletes in the NHL and at Wimbledon.

Dalibor Dědek is the founder of JABLOTRON, a globally successful Czech manufacturer of security technology. Under his leadership, JABLOTRON has grown into a respected producer of security and communication systems, known for its strong focus on in-house research and development of new technologies. After more than two decades, the company ranks among the most successful enterprises in the Czech Republic.

He is also one of the country’s most active philanthropists. Through the Jablotron Foundation, he supports education and civil society in cooperation with other nonprofit organizations, including EDUzměna, Elixír do škol, and the Via Foundation. He contributed 100 million CZK to the Neuron Endowment Fund, providing core funding to support science and promote Czech researchers. In the Liberec region, he established a retirement home and an elementary school in Jablonec, and is currently funding the construction of an orthopedic clinic aimed at reducing patients’ waiting times for surgeries.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, he has been a strong supporter of Ukraine. He immediately suspended all Jablotron deliveries to Russia and Belarus and launched the campaign “Gift for Putin,” which has raised more than 1.1 billion CZK for military aid to Ukraine.

Kryscina moved from Belarus to Czechia in 2009. Court interpreter and translator by profession. In the past, a co-founder of the women’s initiative BLRČR / Vieršnica and a representative of the Belarusian national minority on the Committee for National Minorities of the Prague City Assembly.

Currently, a representative of Belarusian president-elect Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya for Czechia and the head of the Office of Belarus Democratic Forces in the Czech Republic.

In 2020 participated in the evacuation to Czechia of individuals who were injured during the post-election protests in Belarus, as part of the governmental MEDEVAC program.

Karim, a former journalist and educator at a Danish folk high school, became interested in joining the frontlines of democracy building after the winner of the 2020 Belarus elections was forced to flee her country.

Karim joined the Danish-Belarusian group Talaka at the time, where he is now vice-chairman, and became active in organizing a number of activities, including demonstrations, workshops, political conversations, and cultural events, to support the democratic forces of Belarus. Karim is also a driving force behind UNLEASH, a 5,000-member global sustainability network. 

Karim is the international communications director in the office of Belarus’ democratically-elected leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

Nataliya is a prominent Ukrainian journalist and author specialising in conflict reporting. She is the founder and CEO of the Public Interest Journalism Lab (PIJL) which promotes constructive discussion around complex social issues. After the full-scale Russian invasion, Gumenyuk pivoted to frontline media reporting and with her team co-founded The Reckoning Project: Ukraine Testifies, which documents war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russia.

Jeremy is the Executive Director of Transitions, one of Central and Eastern Europe’s leading media development organizations, and Editor-in-Chief of its flagship publication, Transitions, which focuses on solutions journalism and other key issues in the region.

He has been an Ashoka Fellow since 2010 and was a 2023 Sulzberger Fellow at Columbia Journalism School. Jeremy is a former Chairman of the Board of the Fulbright Commission in the Czech Republic and a former member of the supervisory board of the Czech Journalism Prizes.

He holds a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and a master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, he has called Prague home for more than 25 years, where he lives with his family.

Dmitri is international expert with 15+ years of experience in societal resilience, cognitive security, and strategic communications across Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Co-founder and Director-General of Resilient Ukraine and Estonia’s National Centre for Defence & Security Awareness, leading donor-funded programmes on counter-disinformation, civic engagement, and crisis communication. Experienced in bridging policy, research, and practice, with proven leadership in EU- and NATO-supported initiatives. 

Zsuzsanna is a former Hungarian MP, foreign policy specialist, and Founding Director of the Leadership Academy at the CEU Democracy Institute. Her work focuses on how autocratic politics reshapes European societies and the future of the EU. She previously worked at the Council of Europe on democratic development in conflict regions and later co-founded the centrist party Together.

She is the author of Tainted Democracy (2022) and currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

Adam is a globally recognized negotiator with a unique combination of academic qualifications, elite negotiation skills, and extensive experience in high-stakes life-and-death negotiations.

After an academic career as a professor at universities in the USA, Singapore, Germany and Australia, where he specialized in negotiating with terrorists, he dedicated himself to negotiating for the lives of hostages held by criminal groups, pirates, terrorists and state actors worldwide.

Adam served for several years as the principal expert on Kidnap for Ransom at the UN Counter-Terrorism Centre in New York and regularly trains elite negotiation teams, international organisations, and private sector clients around the world (over 65 countries).

Eva is Executive Director of DemNet Hungary, with extensive experience across public administration, diplomacy, and civil society. She has designed and coordinated six deliberative mini-publics in Hungary and provided technical assistance and process design for citizens’ assemblies to the Council of Europe in Ukraine and the OSCE in Albania.

Eva holds MAs in Law, Political Science, and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Potsdam.

She is a 2025 Eisenhower Global Fellow, a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Perry World House (UPenn, 2025–26), and teaches deliberative democracy at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.

Gazela is a political sociologist serving as Director and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, an institution renowned for its commitment to engaged scholarship. Her research focuses on political sociology, particularly social engagement, participatory innovations, social movements, and the role of intellectuals in society.

Her work is driven by a strong belief in evidence-based social sciences and in advancing participatory governance and democratic practices.

Pavlína focuses on trends and future forecasting. Her agency, TrendBrews, helps companies, including Fortune 500 firms, understand and prepare for upcoming trends. She is also part of the international trendspotting community Culture Connectors.

She serves as the Lead Mentor for Google for Startups across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and works with multiple other accelerators, supporting the growth of technology startups. Pavlína is a member of the Advisory Boards of various tech companies and foundations, including the Independent Press Foundation.

Her newsletter on trends and technology, pavlinaspeaks.substack.com, has over 12,000 subscribers and was named by Substack among the Top 50 Rising in Business globally. Her future forecasts have been featured by Wired, ELLE, and TED. Pavlína has received several awards for her work, including the European Citizen’s Prize, awarded by the European Parliament.

Bára is the Executive Director of Díky, že můžem, which she has transformed from a student initiative into a nationwide platform with 16 projects focused on educating and empowering young people in the areas of freedom, democracy, and human rights. The organization’s activities reach millions of people across the Czech Republic each year and include Korzo Národní – the country’s largest celebration of November 17th. It also brings key 21st-century topics, such as disinformation and climate change, into schools.

She is the only Czech selected for the prestigious Obama Foundation Leaders program and was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2024. Bára also works to raise awareness about young people and to challenge the stereotypes that persist about them in public discourse.

Alexej Fulmek graduated from the Faculty of Arts at Comenius University in Bratislava. After completing his studies, he joined the daily Smena in 1989 as a culture editor. Between 1991 and 1992, he worked as a war correspondent in conflict zones of the former Soviet Union, reporting on the Moscow coup, the war in Transnistria, and the conflicts in Abkhazia and Georgia.

In the autumn of 1992, at the age of 26, he became deputy editor-in-chief of Smena. In January 1993, together with Karol Ježík, he co-founded the daily newspaper SME.

He is currently the Chairman of the Board and CEO of Petit Press, a.s., Chairman of the Slovak Association of Publishers, co-founder and Chairman of the Audit Bureau of Circulations Slovakia (ABC SR), and a member of the Board of the Media Development Investment Fund, an international organization supporting independent journalism in countries with limited or emerging democracies.

Marek is an activist and co-founder of the civic association Mladí, o. z., which stands behind initiatives such as Young People Against Fascism, Dúhy.sk, and the travel app Spoznaj svoj kraj. Before the elections, he organized the “Election Trains” project and has led several successful campaigns focused on strengthening democracy in Slovakia.

For his work, he received the SDG Award in the “Leader under 30” category and is a laureate of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Ivan’s professional career is closely tied to radio broadcasting. He began as a music dramaturge and host at Rádio Ragtime and joined Rádio Expres in 2000—initially as a music dramaturge and later as Program Director. In 2014, he was appointed CEO of Bauer Media Slovakia, which includes Rádio Expres, Europa 2, Rádio Melody, Rádio Rock, and Podmaz.

Since 2020, he has also served as President of the Association of Radio Stations (ARS).

Lukáš graduated in law from the Faculty of Law at Comenius University in Bratislava. He began his journalism career in 2002 as a political reporter for The Slovak Spectator. He later worked as a project manager and marketing director at the publishing house Petit Press, and from 2007 served as deputy editor-in-chief and commentator at SME Daily.

In 2014, he became the CEO of N Press, the publisher of Denník N. He also serves as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of N Media and Respekt Media, which publish Deník N and Respekt in the Czech Republic.

Peter has been the CEO of the Markíza Group since September 2023. From 2015, he served as the CEO of O2 Slovakia, and later spent nearly three years leading the Hungarian telecommunications operator Yettel Hungary. He studied linguistics and political science at Comenius University in Bratislava and at the London School of Economics.

Between 2022 and 2024, Vladimír served as the Head of the European Commission Representation in Slovakia. From 2012, he led the Joint Research Centre – the European Commission’s in-house scientific and knowledge service – holding the institution’s highest-ranking non-political position. Earlier, he spent six years as a Director at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education and Culture, and in 2005–2006 he established the Slovak Research and Development Agency.

He is a full professor in Slovakia and has been a visiting professor and researcher at several academic institutions abroad. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the European University Institute in Florence. Vladimír also spent a year as an expert with UNESCO and has published over 100 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Mária is a computer scientist, researcher, and a pioneer of new ideas, playing a key role in the development of artificial intelligence in Slovakia. She founded the Kempelen Institute of Intelligent Technologies, where she connects top-level science with practice, supports talent, and promotes innovations focused on trustworthy AI. Her research focuses on machine learning and human–computer interaction analysis, as well as fostering the Slovak AI community around the world.

Lucia works at Swiss Re as the Head of HR and, since May 2024, has also been leading Swiss Re’s branch in Slovakia.

With more than 20 years of experience, she is an accomplished HR professional who has worked in multinational companies in the high-tech and financial sectors. She currently serves as Vice-Chair of the Business Service Center Forum under the American Chamber of Commerce in Slovakia.

At Swiss Re, she oversees strategic initiatives that align with business goals while also prioritizing employee wellbeing.

Andrej has been working in the financial sector for more than 28 years. He founded and led the private banking division at J&T Bank and held several managerial roles in the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and Slovakia, where he eventually headed J&T Bank’s Slovak operations.

In 2015, he became Chairman of the Board and CEO of Poštová banka, later also becoming one of its co-owners. Under his leadership, the banking group underwent a successful transformation, with the innovative digital bank 365.bank emerging as its flagship brand.

He is also the owner of one of the largest collections of contemporary art in Slovakia – the Art Fond Collection – and is a long-standing supporter of Slovak art and culture.

Silvia is a cultural manager and theatre scholar. From 1999 to 2006, she served as the Director of the Theatre Institute. She then became General Director of the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava, where she played a key role in completing, opening, and making fully operational its new building.

From 2013 to 2019, she was the Director of the Opera of the National Theatre and the State Opera in Prague, overseeing the management of both opera companies. During the caretaker government of Ľudovít Ódor, she served as Minister of Culture of the Slovak Republic, a period during which the government approved the Culture and Creative Industries Strategy 2030.

Currently, she is the Executive Director of the media company Film Europe and is involved in the family project Stará škola Kokava. She also serves as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav Theatre and Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design.

Julia Sherwood was born in Bratislava to writer and humorist Ján Kalina and journalist Agneša Kalinová. After her family was forced to emigrate, she studied Slavic languages and English at universities in Cologne, Munich and London. She went on to work for more than twenty years at the headquarters of the human rights organization Amnesty International. Julia has long been based in London, where she focuses on literary translation. In addition to Slovak, she translates from Czech, Polish and Russian.

She founded and runs the Facebook group Slovak Literature in English Translation, which shares news and updates about Slovak books available in English. She also curates The Slovak List, a series of Slovak titles published by the renowned Seagull Books. Together with Magdalena Mullek, she co-founded the website SlovakLiterature.com and co-edited Into the Spotlight, an anthology of contemporary Slovak writing.

In 2019, she received the Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav Prize, awarded to foreign translators who have made a long-term and significant contribution to bringing Slovak literature to international readers.

Ľuba is a journalist and writer. She worked, among other roles, for the Slovak service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where she focused primarily on cases involving the Slovak Intelligence Service during the government of Vladimír Mečiar.

She explored this topic in depth in several books, including Únos demokracie (The Abduction of Democracy) and Únos prezidentovho syna (The Abduction of the President’s Son). She is also the author of several theatre plays, such as Antikvariát and Hitlerov prezident.

Zuzana studied journalism at the Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra. She focuses primarily on politics and poverty-related topics. She joined SME Daily in October 2018 after leaving RTVS. Together with her colleagues, she works on the outlet’s video content.

Jolana’s professional path has three main branches. She studied philosophy at Comenius University, where she later also taught until she was dismissed during the political purges that followed 1968.

Her second area of expertise is psychological counseling. She contributed to establishing Marriage Counseling Centres and Centres for Counseling and Psychological Services beginning in 1972, and she continues to work in this field to this day.

At the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, she worked on a project dedicated to preserving and documenting samizdat literature in Slovakia — a long-term endeavor that remains one of her key professional interests.

For several years, Dominika led GLOBSEC’s Centre for Democracy & Resilience. For over eight years, her work has focused on examining foreign influence on democracies and exploring how states and societies can strengthen their resilience in the face of new geopolitical, technological, and political challenges.

Within GLOBSEC, she manages large international projects and oversees data-driven analyses with a pan-European scope, such as GLOBSEC Trends and the Vulnerability Index.

Dominika holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of Leuven. After graduating, she spent several years in Brussels, where she worked in the field of European policy.

Martin Slosiarik is the director of the research company FOCUS Centre for Social and Marketing Analysis. He studied sociology at the Comenius Univerity’s Faculty of Arts in Bratislava. He has worked on several international research projects such as Eurobarometer conducted for the European Commission, World Poll conducted for the Gallup, Inc. research company, Global Attitudes Survey conducted for Pew Research Center, and others.

In Slovakia, he was part of research with academic institutions such as the Institute of Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the Department of Political Science of the Charles University, the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences of the Comenius University, and others.
His research focuses on voting behaviour and current social affairs.

Martin is a graduate in German studies. He began his professional career as a teacher before transitioning into journalism. From 2002 to 2004, he worked as an editor for the weekly magazine Domino fórum. In December 2004, he co-founded the magazine .týždeň, where he served as deputy editor-in-chief from 2008 to 2014. He was also involved in the creation of the news website Postoj, and has been its editor-in-chief since May 2020.

Martin is a long-time radio host. On Rádio_FM, he can be heard on the morning show Ráno na eFeMku, in the Slovak-Czech music chart Osmička, and in Demovnica, a platform that showcases emerging music artists. He regularly hosts public events such as the White Crow civic courage awards, the Days of Architecture and Design, the Civil Servant Act of the Year awards, and many others.

With a passion for meaningful projects, he has collaborated with the Pontis Foundation for several years on the Via Bona Slovakia responsible business awards and is currently involved in producing a podcast about philanthropy.

Elena is a sociologist who has long focused on the integration of minorities and people with a migration background into society. She also works on preventing radicalization and promoting minority participation.

She is the Director of the Centre for Research on Ethnicity and Culture (CVEK), which contributes through its research, educational, and advocacy activities to a fairer and more cohesive society and to the protection of the rights of various population groups.

Elena is the author of numerous publications and studies on trust, integration, and social cohesion. She has also served as an advisor to President Zuzana Čaputová on the Presidential Advisory Committee for Minorities.

Maroš is the Executive Director of the Center for Community Organizing, where he and his team develop community organizing as a tool for building resilient local communities. Under his leadership, CKO has expanded its activities to include education, communication, and advocacy in the field of radicalization prevention, as resilience only makes sense when built systematically.

In addition to leading the organization, he contributes to public policy as a member of the Commission Against Extremism (VRAX) and the EU Knowledge Hub for Radicalization Prevention. He connects local initiatives with national and European-level efforts and explores ways to support long-term civic engagement.

In the fall of 2025, he became part of the Obama Leaders Europe program, which brings together leaders strengthening democracy and community resilience.

Jakub is a publicist and digital communications specialist. During the pandemic, he led the online communications of the Slovak Ministry of Health, later worked with the team of President Zuzana Čaputová, and previously held positions in the advertising industry.

He is a recipient of the Slovak Journalism Award for a series of blog articles and has long focused on disinformation and the functioning of social media. Jakub studied philosophy, political science, and economics at the University of York in the United Kingdom.

Lucia studied special education at the Catholic University in Ružomberok and at the Jan Amos Komenský University in Prague. As a special educator and lecturer, she supports schools in developing diversity-sensitive strategies and inclusive approaches. She works with the civic association Tanana, where she focuses on supporting women and families after the loss of a child, especially during pregnancy, childbirth, and the immediate postpartum period.

Iva is a journalist and academic whose research focuses on cultural intersections between the Islamic world (MENA) and European societies. She examines issues of migration, extremism, and terrorism, including questions of repatriation and the deradicalization of European foreign fighters. Her work contributes to shaping public policy in EU countries and the United Kingdom.

Driven by her interest in people and her home country, she authored the book Hĺbkovory (2024), a series of intimate interviews profiling notable Slovak figures. She writes the newsletter Denník reportérky on Substack.

Michal is a Slovak writer, translator from German, and publicist. He writes both books for adults and children. In 2024, he co-authored the comic Súdruh disident about Milan Šimečka with Matúš Vizár. He is a regular contributor to Denník N.

Lucia is the Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Slovakia. She joined Forbes in 2017, first as a reporter and later as the editor leading Forbes.sk. Since 2024, she has overseen the compilation of the Forbes list of the Wealthiest Slovaks and hosts the podcast Forbes Power Players. She studied international relations and energy security at Masaryk University in Brno and previously wrote about energy topics for Hospodárske noviny.

She is a graduate of Nexteria Leadership Academy and an alumna of the social entrepreneurship program at Indiana University and the Kelley School of Business in the United States, where she studied as a Fulbright scholar. She co-founded Nevyhorení, a mental health awareness project, and is the author of the bestselling book of the same name.

Martina is the Executive Director of the Pontis Foundation, where she focuses on advancing social innovation and strategic philanthropy in Slovakia. She initiated the first national mapping of social innovators and has long been committed to strengthening individual giving and building meaningful links between corporate donors, public institutions, and civil society.

In 2023, she became the first person from Slovakia to join the Obama Leaders Europe program.

Lukáš Onderčanin is a journalist and Head of the Foreign Desk at SME Daily, where he has worked since 2013. His reporting focuses mainly on Central European issues, the rule of law, and Ukraine. In 2021 and 2024, he received the Slovak Journalism Award for his coverage of media freedom in Central Europe.

He co-hosts the travel podcast Všesvet and is the author of the historical reportage Utopia in Lenin’s Garden (2021), about the Czechoslovak commune Interhelpo in Soviet Kyrgyzstan.

Zuzana Papazoski is a democratic governance and legislative strengthening expert with over two decades of experience managing complex, donor-funded programs across Central and South Eastern Europe. Currently serving as the Resident Senior Director for Central Europe at the National Democratic Institute (NDI).

She leads initiatives aimed at bolstering democratic resilience, civic engagement, and inclusive governance in Central Europe, with the inclusion of actors from Romania and Ukraine.

Pavol Szalai leads the Prague office of the international organization Reporters Without Borders. Together with correspondents in 20 countries across Central and Eastern Europe, the organization works to protect the freedom, safety, and sustainability of the media.

Pavol studied at universities in Bratislava, Brno, New York, and Paris, and he says that he has put his education into service for the public good.

In 2017, he received the White Crow Award alongside former colleague Zuzana Hlávková for whistleblowing in the case of the overpriced Slovak EU Presidency.