Board of Directors

Victor Pinchuk, Honorary Chair

Victor Pinchuk is one of Ukraine’s most successful businessmen, whose role in civic, international affairs, and charitable organizations has made him a leader in Ukraine’s growing interaction with Europe and the world. He graduated with honors from the Dnipropetrovs’k Metallurgical Institute in 1983 and earned a PhD degree in 1987 before starting his career as a research engineer in pipe production. In 1990, he founded Interpipe Company on the basis of his patented innovations in pipe design, engineering and production, which were successfully adopted by leading metallurgical factories in the former USSR. In 2006, he founded EastOne Ltd., an international investment advisory company whose portfolio comprises more than 20 businesses and large-scale projects, including Interpipe and media assets in Ukraine and internationally. Mr. Pinchuk served two terms as an elected Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, from 1998 to 2006. In 2003, he decided to retire from politics to focus on his business and philanthropic activities. For more than 12 years Mr. Pinchuk has been developing and supporting a number of philanthropic projects in Ukraine. In 2006, he consolidated these activities under the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, which became the largest private Ukrainian philanthropic foundation. The Victor Pinchuk Foundation, together with EERC, founded the Kyiv School of Economics.  

• Anders Åslund, Senior Advisor to the KSE Board of Directors; Peterson Institute for International Economics

Anders Åslund has been a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute since 2006. He is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. He examines the economies of Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, as well as focuses on the broader implications of economic transition. He worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 1994 to 2005, first as a senior associate and then from 2003 as director of the Russian and Eurasian Program. He also worked at the Brookings Institution and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. He earned his doctorate from Oxford University. Åslund served as an economic adviser to the governments of Russia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. He was a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics and the founding director of the Stockholm Institute of East European Economics. He worked as a Swedish diplomat in Kuwait, Poland, Geneva, and Moscow. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and an honorary professor of the Kyrgyz National University. He is co-chairman of the board of trustees of the Kyiv School of Economics and chairman of the Advisory Council of the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE), Warsaw. Dr. Åslund is the author or coauthor of ten books.
 

• Irina Akimova, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Staff, Presidential Administration of Ukraine

Irina Akimova is the First Deputy Head of Administration for the President of Ukraine and is a deputy of the Sixth VerkhovnaRada. From March 2006 to September 2007, she was the General Director of BEST think tank and prior to that she was the Director of the Blue Ribbon Analytical and Advisory Centre-UNDP. Ms. Akimova has lectured at the Economics Education and Research Consortium (EERC)/ Kyiv School of Economics. Prior to that, she spent five years as the Director of the Institute of Economic Research and Political Consultations sponsored by the governments of Ukraine and Germany. She has held positions as a researcher at Otto von Geryke Technical University at Magdeburg, Germany and during that time was awarded the DAAD scholarship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Ms. Akimova has also been a researcher at the Economy Center of Central and Eastern Europe, organized by Warsaw University in partnership with Columbia University. She holds a PhD in economics from Kharkiv National University.

• Max Alier,  International Monetary Fund

Max Alier has been working as IMF resident representative in Ukraine since February, 2009. 
He has over twelve-years of experience at IMF. During his career at the IMF he has accumulated vast experience in providing economic advice and leading teams of IMF economists. In particular, he worked as the IMF resident representative in Brazil for four year, headed the mission to Trinidad and Tobago for 2 years. He has also worked with several Emerging Market economies, including Argentina, Ecuador, Indonesia, Chile, and Peru. While in Ukraine, he developed proactive relations with decision-makers at the highest level of Ukrainian Authorities while also working closely with technical level officials in order to promote an implementation of the economic program supported by the IMF financing under Stand-by arrangement between Ukraine and the IMF. The total amount of financing available to Ukraine under the SBA agreement concluded with the IMF last Novermber is SDR 11.0 billion (or USD 16.5) of which SDR  7.0 billion (or USD 10.5) has been already disbursed. Max Alier obtained his PhD at the University of California-Los Angeles and obtained his bachelor and master degrees at the Catholic University of Chile. He has held teaching positions at the University of California-Los Angeles (USA), Univerdidad Andres Bello (Chile), and Universidad de Talca (Chile).

• Torbjorn Becker, Director of SITE

Torbjorn Becker has been Director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) at the Stockholm School of Economics since August 2006.  Prior to this he worked at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since 1997 where his most recent position was as Senior Economist in the Research Department. In this capacity, his research and policy work focused on international financial architecture issues and particularly on how emerging markets can protect themselves against adverse shocks and what role IFIs could have in preventing and resolving crises. More generally, his work covers macroeconomics, international economics, financial markets, debt management, fiscal policy and development issues. In previous positions at the IMF, he worked on emerging markets and developing countries in Eastern Europe and Russia, the Asia Pacific and the Middle East. Torbjorn holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Stockholm School of Economics where he also did his undergraduate studies. He has also studied at U.C. Berkeley and the Manchester Business School.

• Tom Coupe, Ex officio, EERC/KSE

Tom Coupe is the Director of the Kyiv School of Economics and the President of EERC. He also occupies the positions of the KSE Associate Professor and KEI Senior Research Fellow. Dr. Coupe obtained his Ph.D from the Free University of Brussels (ULB) in 2002. His research interests include economics of education, labor economics and political economics. Tom Coupe regularly writes columns for newspapers, as well as articles for international academic journals, and has done consultancy work for the European Economic Association, Routledge, UNESCO and the World Bank.

• Richard Ericson, Chairman of the Research Network IAB; East Carolina University

Richard Ericson graduated from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1971, received an MIA Degree from the Columbia University School of International Affairs in 1974, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1979. Beginning with his dissertation on the Soviet Industrial Supply System, Professor Ericson has done research and teaching in economic theory, the Soviet economy, and the Russian transition at Harvard University (1978-1983), Yale University (1982), Northwestern University (1981, 1983-1985), the New Economic School in Moscow (1996), Urals State University in Ekaterinburg (1999, 2000), the Kazakh National University in Almaty (2002), Columbia University (1985-2003), and East Carolina University (2003-present). He has served as Associate Director (1991) and Director (1992-1995) of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, and is currently Chair and Professor in the Harriot College Economics Department at East Carolina University, Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the EERC (Economic Education and Research Consortium) Network Program, and member of the Executive Committee and Board of Trustees of EERC, Inc. 

• Paul Gregory, Chairman of the KSE IAB; University of Houston

Paul Gregory, a Hoover Institution research fellow, holds an endowed professorship in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, Texas, and is a research professor at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. The holder of a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, he is the author or coauthor of twelve books and many articles on economic history, the Soviet economy, transition economies, comparative economics, and economic demography including Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives (Hoover Institution Press, 2008), The Political Economy of Stalinism (2004), Before Command: The Russian Economy from Emancipation to Stalin (1994), Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy (1990, reissued 2006), and Russian National Income, 1885–1913 (1982, reissued 2005). He has edited Behind the Façade of Stalin's Command Economy (2001) and The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag (2003), both published by Hoover Press and summarizing his research group's work on the Soviet state and party archives. His publications based on work in the Hoover Archives have been awarded the Hewett Book Prize and the J.M. Montias Prize for the best article in the Journal of Comparative Economics. The research of his Hoover Soviet Archives Research Project team is summarized in part in "Allocation under Dictatorship: Research in Stalin's Archive" (coauthored with Hoover fellow Mark Harrison), published in the September issue of the Journal of Economic Literature.

• Yegor Grygorenko, Manager, Bain & Company KSE (EERC)’2001

Yegor Grygorenko is a KSE alumnus – he graduated with honors from the EERC MA program (KSE predecessor) in 2001. Prior to joining the EERC program, he has received a Bachelor degree from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Unlike most of his classmates, who opted out for the academic career, Yegor had chosen to try himself in the financial sector and joined the Kiev office of Citibank straight after graduation. He had stayed with Citi until 2007, moving through different areas of the bank (Credit, Risk, Finance) and different geographies – between 2004 and 2007 he was based in Moscow, carrying out assignments also in London and Almaty. By 2007 Yegor had been managing the Business Planning and Analysis function for CIS and simultaneously held a title of the CIS Product Controller. For many years he had been a full member of the bank’s Assets and Liabilities Committee, first in Kiev and then in Moscow. In late 2007 Yegor decided to change his career track and joined on e of the top 3 global strategy consulting houses – Bain & Company as a consultant. While at Bain, Yegor focused on projects in Financial Services and Private Equity, although he had also worked for clients in Steel, Consumer Goods and Airlines. His major experiences include launching and facilitating large-scale turnaround programs for largest European and CIS companies, providing assistance to clients in a post-merger phase and lending advice to foreign companies planning their entry into Russia or Ukraine. During the last 4 years Yegor has been running projects in very diverse locations, from Milan to Magadan, having served clients in 11 different time zones. Currently, Yegor is a Manager in Bain & Company’s Kyiv office and a member of the CIS FS Practice leadership team. Although Yegor has not been very active in the economics research field in the last decade, he has several publications. In particular, his joint publication in the JCE with another EERC graduate Yury Gorodnichenko, Can the Oligarchs be Productive, received a Paolo Montias prize last year. Yegor holds Chartered Financial Analyst designation and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.

• Hryhoriy Nemyria, Former Vice Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs

Dr. Nemyria occupied a position of the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine. Previously he served as Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's foreign policy advisor, a member of parliament, Deputy Head of the Permanent Parliamentary Delegation to the PACE, and the Ukrainian delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee (2006-2007). Dr. Nemyria is Founder and Director of the Center for European and International Studies at the Kyiv National University, and Honorary Chair of the Department for European Integration at the National Academy of Public Administration. In 1996-1998, he was Vice Rector and Dean of the Graduate School at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy. Dr. Nemyria was a visiting Professor at the Institute for Political Studies in Bordeaux (1998), a visiting Lecturer at the NATO Defense College in Rome (1999), Co-Director and Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council Coordinator for the NATO Forum on Energy Security (2006), and a National Forum Foundation Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (1994). He is a graduate of the Harvard Ukrainian National Security Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He holds an MA from the Donetsk University and a Ph.D. from the Kyiv Taras Shevchenko National University.

• William Newton-Smith, Open Society Institute (OSI)

Bill Newton-Smith is a philosopher of science who recently retired from teaching at Balliol College, Oxford University after 36 years. He has worked for many years on the reform of higher education in the post-communist world and is on the board of a number of universities. He is active in the Soros Foundation network as chair of the Open Society Institute’s Higher Education Sub-Board and as chair of the Open Society Foundation (London). In addition to the Kyiv School of Economics, he serves on board of numerous higher educational institutions in the Eurasia region, including the American University of Central Asia and the International School of Economics in Tbilisi.  

• Irina Paliashvili, RULG-Ukrainian Legal Group, P.A.

Irina Paliashvili is the founder and President of the Russian-Ukrainian Legal Group, the first and only law Ukrainian firm with offices in Kyiv and Washington, DC. The firm is one of the first private law firms in Kiev founded since the independent of Ukraine in 1992. She is a mediator trained and certified by the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution in New York, a founding member of the Moscow Center for Dispute Resolution, a member of the INTA International Panel of Neutrals, and a member of the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution International Panel of Distinguished Neutrals. She also serves on the Board of Reporters of the Institute for Transnational Arbitration of the Center for American and International Law (ITA) as Reporter for Ukraine. Dr. Paliashvili graduated with high honors from the Kiev State University School of International Law in 1983 and received a Ph.D. in Private International Law from the same school in 1987. She also holds an LL.M. in International and Comparative Law from George Washington University (1993). 

• Gerardo della Paolera, Global Development Network

Dr. Gerardo della Paolera is the President of the Global Development Network. Dr. della Paolera was the Founding President and Rector of Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Argentina, and most recently worked as the President of The American University of Paris (AUP), in Paris, France. Dr. della Paolera is President Emeritus and Professor of Economics at AUP, a Visiting Professor at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest and also a Visiting Fellow at the Paris School of Economics (PSE). He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago.  

• Leonid Petukhov, Geo Alliance Concern

Leonid Petukhov is a CEO of Geo Alliance Concern. From 2000 to 2007 he worked for McKinsey & Company as an Engagement Manager. From 1998 to 2000 he was  lawyer in the Taxation Department of Baker & McKenzie. Leonid obtained a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He graduated from the Russian Federation’s State Finance Academy and the Moscow State Law Academy.  

• Jorge Zukoski, American Chamber of Commerce

Mr. Jorge Zukoski is the President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine which is among the most active and effective non-government, non-profit business organizations operating in Ukraine. One of the principal activities of the organization is to represent the foreign investment community as well as to facilitate the entrance of potential new investors into the market. The Chamber advocates on behalf of their Members not only to the Ukrainian government, but also to all other governments, which are economic partners of Ukraine, on matters of trade, commerce, and economic reform. The Member organizations of the Chamber represent many of the largest strategic and institutional investors operating in Ukraine who have committed a majority of the foreign direct investment into the market. The diverse Membership base unites leading companies from over 50 nations across the globe and includes companies from a variety of regions and countries, including North America, Europe, Asia, Russia, and Ukraine. Chamber Members collectively employ hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, providing them with exposure to international business practices and the opportunity to develop into leading professionals. Chamber Members also bring international expertise and business knowledge to Ukraine, are among some of the largest taxpayers in the country, and strive to be good corporate citizens. Mr. Zukoski, an American citizen of Venezuelan and Polish descent, received his Master's of Business Administration in international management from the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University (Texas, USA). He lived and worked in Mexico City and the Cayman Islands prior to arriving in Ukraine in 1996.

• Yuriy Yekhanurov, Former Deputy Head of Ukraine’s Presidential Secretariat

Yuriy I. Yekhanurov was the first deputy head of the Ukrainian Presidential Secretariat. He.has previously served as the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense in the current government of Yulia Tymoshenko. When Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, Yekhanurov started working for the Kiev municipal government. He was appointed as Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine in 1993, and later headed the State Property Fund of Ukraine (which coordinated the privatization) from 1994 to 1997. He also served for a short time as Minister of Economy in the cabinet of Pavlov Lazarenko in 1997. He was elected a member of the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, in 1998. In 1999, Mr. Yekhanurov  joined the cabinet as the First Vice Prime Minister. Mr. Yekhanurov holds a Ph.D.-equivalent degree in Economics. 

• Regina Yan, Co-Chair; Eurasia Foundation

Regina Yan is a specialist in institutional and capacity building for international non-profits. As the Executive Vice President at The Eurasia Foundation, Ms. Yan has transformed its offices into four independent regional foundations. She also managed the establishment of the Economic Education and Research Consortium (EERC) from an incubated project within the Eurasia Foundation into an independent institution which now administers the Kyiv School of Economics. Ms. Yan served on the management team of the Media Viability Fund, a program that provided technical assistance and loan funds to independent media outlets in Russia and Ukraine. From 1992-2000, Ms. Yan held various senior management positions at IREX where she provided management oversight to the IREX field operations in 22 countries. She also launched its Asian program with Mongolia and China and spearheaded it strategic organization restructuring. From 1988 to 1992, Ms. Yan managed various international programs at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the National Research Council where she worked with former Soviet Union, Asia and the Middle East. Regina Yan received her B.A. from Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington and her graduate degrees from the University of Hawaii. In addition to being the co-chair of the Kyiv School of Economics, she also serves on the board of East Europe Foundation.