Nina Jankowicz is a communications, democracy, and governance specialist with a focus on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In 2016-2017 she served as a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellow in Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, providing strategic communications advice to the MFA’s Spokesperson. Prior to her work in Ukraine, Nina was a Program Officer at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), where she managed NDI’s democracy assistance programs to Russia and Belarus and later joined NDI’s Government Relations and Communications team. In August, Nina will join the Wilson Center for International Scholars as a George. F. Kennan Fellow, where she will begin work towards a book on modern Russian disinformation. Her writing has been published by the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and Atlantic Council.

Nina received her MA in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, where she was a Title VIII and FLAS scholarship recipient, and her BA from Bryn Mawr College, where she graduated magna cum laude (and her tendencies as a fierce advocate for and supporter of her female friends and colleagues were solidified). She has lived and worked in Ukraine and Russia, and speaks fluent Russian and proficient Ukrainian and Polish.

Fun fact: In her free time, Nina is active in Washington DC’s community theater scene, where she’s played everything from a five-year-old with a serious overachievement problem (Sally in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”), the cast-aside wife of a Russian chess grandmaster (Svetlana in “Chess”) and a ditzy damsel in distress who gets eaten by a plant from outer space (Audrey in “Little Shop of Horrors”).