Biographies

Andrzej Sebastian Duda, was born on May 16, 1972 in Cracow. He is a Polish politician who served as the sixth President of Republic of Poland, holding the office since 6 August 2015.

In 1997, President Duda defended his Master’s Thesis and started working as an academic teacher and scholar at the Chair of Administrative Proceedings, and as of 2001, the Chair of Administrative Law of the Jagiellonian University. In 2005, following the presentation of his dissertation “the Legal Interest in the Polish Administrative Law”, President Duda obtained a doctoral degree in law.

Before his tenure as President, from 2008 to 2010, during the presidency of the late Lech Kaczyński, Duda was an undersecretary of state in the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland. In the 2011 parliamentary election, he received 79,981 votes for the Kraków constituency, as a candidate for the Law and Justice party, and became member of the Sejm (Parliament). In September 2013, the news weekly magazine Polityka commended President Duda for being one of the most active MPs, at the time, describing him as being open to opposition arguments and as refraining from personal attacks, as part of his role at the Commission for Constitutional Responsibility. President Duda remained a member of the Sejm until he was elected to the European Parliament in 2014.

Andrzej Duda was the presidential candidate for Law and Justice party, during the presidential election in May 2015. In the first round of voting, he received 5,179,092 votes – 34.76% of valid votes. In the second round of voting, he received 51.55% of the vote, winning with the incumbent president Bronisław Komorowski, who received 48.45% of the vote. On 26 May 2015, Duda resigned his party membership assuming the position of president-elect.

Dmytro Kuleba served as Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from March 2020 to September 2024 and was one of the most effective and visible members of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s cabinet during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As the youngest foreign minister in Ukraine’s history, he led the country’s foreign service through its most challenging times. He played a pivotal role in forging alliances, securing arms, imposing sanctions, advancing Ukraine’s bids for EU and NATO membership, and strengthening ties with Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Renowned for his skill as a communicator, Kuleba excelled in articulating Ukraine’s position on the global stage. Under his leadership, the Foreign Ministry became a leader in wartime communications and was the first in the world to introduce an AI-driven spokesperson. Today, Dmytro Kuleba lives in Ukraine and holds affiliations as a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and an Associate Professor at the Institute of Political Studies, Sciences Po. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Kuleba is the author of the bestselling book in Ukraine, “The War for Reality: How to Win in the World of Fakes, Truths, and Communities”. In this work, he delves into the realities of information warfare, offering five essential rules for winning the fight against disinformation. The book serves as a practical guide for safeguarding personal data, fostering critical thinking, and resisting manipulation in the digital age. In 2024, Kuleba curated “War and New Horizons”, a forward-looking collection of essays by some of the world’s most prominent thinkers, including Anne Applebaum, Ban Ki-moon, Sergiy Plokhii, Condoleezza Rice, Nassim Taleb, Timothy Snyder, Samantha Power, and Boris Johnson. The book examines Ukraine’s role in shaping the global future.

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