Our Patrons
Natalie Jaresko
Natalie Jaresko has enjoyed a distinguished international career in public service and private industry. As Ukraine’s Finance Minister (2014-16) she led the successful negotiation of the largest IMF program in the institution’s history, as well as a complex debt restructuring and advanced tax reform resulting in an almost 50% reduction in payroll tax. Previously, she spent two decades working as Horizon Capital co-founder and CEO, a fund with over $600 million under management and as Western NIS Enterprise Fund President and CEO, creating a platform for private equity investment in the region. She began her career in public service in the United States, serving in the State Department from 1989-92, then as Economic Section Chief of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine from 1992-95. She is a non-resident Distinguished Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on Financial and Monetary Systems.
Archbishop Borys Gudziak
Archbishop Borys Gudziak is the President of the Ukrainian Catholic University, with which the Ukrainian Institute London is affiliated. Born in Syracuse, New York (USA) in 1960, he was ordained a priest in 1998. He received his doctorate in Byzantine and Slavic studies from Harvard University and is the author of numerous academic works. From 2012, when he was ordained a bishop, Borys Guziak was the Eparch of the Paris-based Eparchy of St Volodymyr the Great for Ukrainian Catholics in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Switzerland. In 2019, Bishop Borys was appointed by Pope Francis as the Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia and Metropolitan for the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the USA.
Yaroslav Hrytsak
Yaroslav Hrytsak is a Professor of Modern History at the Ukrainian Catholic University and Professor Honoris Causa of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. He is one of Ukraine’s leading intellectuals. Hrytsak is the author of many books and articles, including History of Ukraine, 1772-1999: Birth of a New Nation (Lublin, 2000), Passions over Bandera: Articles and Essays (Kyiv, 2010), Essays in Ukrainian History: Making of Modern Ukrainian Nation (Kyiv, 1996), Prophet in His Fatherland: Ivan Franko and His Community (Kyiv, 2006), The Spirit that Moves to Battle… A political portrait of Ivan Franko (Lviv, 1990).
Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum is a columnist for the Washington Post, author of award-winning books and in charge of Arena, an innovative programme dedicated to overcoming the challenges of disinformation based at Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Economics. Anne is the author of several books, including Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, Gulag: A History, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction and Iron Curtain, which won the 2013 Cundill Prize for Historical Literature. Since 1989, her writing has frequently focused on the politics of post-communist transition in Russia and Europe, but she also writes extensively about British, American and European politics. Anne is a former member of the Washington Post editorial board, a former deputy editor of the Spectator magazine, and a former Warsaw correspondent of The Economist. She is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and has lectured at many other universities, including Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Zurich and Heidelberg.
Philippe Sands
Philippe Sands KC is Professor of Law at University College London and a practising barrister at Matrix Chambers. He appears as counsel before international courts and tribunals, and sits as an international arbitrator. He is author of Lawless World (2005) and Torture Team (2008) and numerous academic books on international law, and has contributed to the New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, the Financial Times, The Guardian and the New York Times. Philippe Sands has been a key driving force in lobbying for a special tribunal for the Russian crime of aggression in Ukraine.
His latest books are The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy (2022), The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive (2020), East West Street: On the Origins of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide (2016), awarded the 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize, the 2017 British Book Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year, and the 2018 Prix Montaigne. Philippe Sands served as President of English PEN from February 2018 to April 2023 and is a member of the Board of the Hay Festival of Arts and Literature. Philippe Sands is a patron of the Ukrainian Institute London.
Kirill Karabits
Ukrainian conductor Kirill Karabits has been Chief Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra (one of the oldest UK orchestras) for 12 years and their relationship has been celebrated worldwide. Together they have made many critically acclaimed recordings, performed regularly at the BBC Proms and last season appeared together at London’s Barbican Centre as part of the Beethoven celebrations. Karabits has worked with many of the leading ensembles of Europe, Asia and North America, including the Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Chicago Symphony orchestras, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Philharmonia Orchestra, Wiener Symphoniker, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Filarmonica del Teatro La Fenice and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Highlights of the 2021-22 include his debut with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in London and on tour in Asia and return visits to the Orchestre National Capitole de Toulouse, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and Antwerp Symphony Orchestra at the Bozar in Brussels. Together with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Karabits regularly champions Ukrainian composers in the UK, in collaboration with classical label Onyx they have recorded early symphonic works by Sergei Prokofiev, written during his Donbas period. He was named Conductor of the Year at the 2013 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards.
Kenneth Nowakowski
Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski is Ukrainian Eparchial Bishop of the Holy Family Eparchy in London. Born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1958, he gained his Bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies with a minor in Philosophy from St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto in 1984 and a second degree, in Sacred Theology, from the University of St. Thomas Aquinas, Rome in 1989. He was ordained to the priesthood in the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Saskatoon, Canada in 1989. In 1990-1992 Bishop Kenneth directed the Ukrainian Catholic Refugee Office, Italy. In 1991 he was appointed chief of staff in Lviv, Ukraine for his Beatitude Myroslav Ivan Cardinal Lubachivsky and Vice-rector of Holy Spirit Seminary, Lviv, Ukraine. In 1993-2001 he held a leadership role in the Metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky Hospital in Lviv, Ukraine. In June 2007, he was appointed Ukrainian Eparchial Bishop of New Westminster and was consecrated Bishop in July 2007. Since 2019, Bishop Kenneth has served as Head of the Patriarchal Curia Pastoral Council. He was appointed Ukrainian Eparchial Bishop of the Holy Family Eparchy in London in January 2020.
Oksana Zabuzhko
Oksana Zabuzhko is Ukraine’s major contemporary writer, the author of more than twenty books of different genres (poetry, fiction, essays, criticism). She made her poetry debut at the age of 12, yet, as her parents had been blacklisted during the Soviet purges of the 1970s, it was not until the perestroika that her first book was published. She graduated from the department of philosophy of Kyiv Shevchenko University, obtained her PhD in philosophy of arts, and has worked as a research associate for the Institute of Philosophy of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In the early 1990s she lectured in the USA as a Fulbright Fellow and a Writer-in-Residence at Penn State University, Harvard University, and University of Pittsburgh. After the publication of her novel Field Work in Ukrainian Sex (1996), which in 2006 was named “the most influential Ukrainian book for the 15 years of independence”, she has been living as a free-lance author. Ms. Zabuzhko has established herself as the country’s leading public intellectual, and has been listed in the media among Ukraine’s top 100 most influential people.
Andrey Kurkov
Andrey Kurkov is a writer, journalist and screenwriter. He is the author of 24 novels and 10 books for children. More than 20 feature, short, tv films and documentaries are based on his scripts. He is the first writer in post-Soviet countries, whose books have reached the top ten European bestsellers. Over 150 thousand copies of his most popular novel Death and the Penguin were sold in Ukraine. Kurkov’s books are translated into 37 languages. Andrey Kurkov is the president of PEN Ukraine.
