Marina Sivasheva – Belarus & Central Asia

  • M.A. in Russian Language and Literature, Kyrgyz National University, Kyrgyzstan
  • Scholarship award for training course at The Media School, Indiana University, USA
  • Expert on Belarus, Central Asia and International Relations
  • 20 years experience working as a journalist in Central Asia and Belarus
  • Extensive contacts to senior politicians and high-level policy makers in Belarus and across Central Asia and the Former Soviet Union
  • Executive editor of Эхо событий (Echo of Events), Kyrgyzstan
  • Head, Politics Section, Central Asian Post
  • Deputy Chief Editor, Res Publica, Kyrgyzstan’s leading broadsheet
  • Chief Editor, Absolut-Express
  • Soros Foundation Kyrgyzstan
    • Expert on the Commission Grant of the Media Support programme
  • Contractor for, CIMERA, a Swiss non-governmental project for the development of mass-media:
    • Edited articles for the CIMERA bulletin Media Insight Central Asia
    • Trained journalists
  • Head, Printed Media on Mass Communication Courses, Department of Journalism, American University of Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
  • Internships at newspapers in the United States and Poland

Ian Pryde – Founder & Chairman, ESC, Contributing Editor, Explaining Eurasia

  • M.Phil., International Relations, University of Cambridge, UK
  • M.Sc., International Securities, Investment and Banking, The ICMA Centre – The Business School for Financial Markets – Henley Business School, University of Reading, UK
  • B.A., Politics & Modern History, University of Manchester, UK
  • German Politics & Russian, University of Frankfurt, Germany
    • Including one-year scholarship from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service)
  • First visited Moscow in 1986, spent over 20 years living and working in the USSR, Russia, Central Asia and Azerbaijan since the late 1980s
  • Native fluency in Russian and German
  • Began publishing on Russia and Central Asia in both English and Russian in the early 1990s
  • Published numerous accurate forecasts on international politics, Russia, Central  Asia and business
  • Has written on Russia for
    • RIA-Novosti
      • Ian’s weekly columns for the Opinion & Analysis rubric became one of the most visited sections of RIA Novosti’s English website, with many articles syndicated by Johnson’s Russia List, UPI and newspapers in Europe, Asia and North America.
    • Russia Beyond The Headlines
      • Ian’s regular Op-Ed columns were among the most popular on this English-language website
    • www.gazeta.ru (in Russian)
      • Gazeta.ru is one of the most popular Russian language news sources with over a million visitors daily
      • Ian’s articles regularly achieved large or near record numbers of hits, clicks and comments
    • Novaya Gazeta (Новая газета) (in Russian)
      • A popular Russian print and online newspaper
    • Economist Intelligence Unit, UK
    • Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Cambridge, UK
    • Business Monitor International Limited, London, UK
    • The Moscow Times
    • The Moscow Times Business Review
    • Russia Profile, Moscow
    • Russian Journal (Русский журнал), Moscow (in Russian)
      • This site was owned by former Kremlin advisor Gleb Pavlovsky
    • Trendline Russia (sponsored sections on the Russian economy which appeared in The Washington Post and The Daily Telegraph in London, November-December 2006
  • Has written on Central Asia for
    • the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, UK
    • Journal of Democracy, Washington D.C.
    • Russia Profile, Moscow
    • Izvestiya (Известия), Moscow (in Russian)
    • Res Publica, Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic (in Russian)
  • Editor, English Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
    • an English version of Germany’s leading broadsheet published jointly by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the International Herald Tribune
  • Consulting projects in Central Asia include:
    • PriceWaterhouse: Privatization, Strategic Investment and Capital Markets, USAID;
    • Consultant to a Central Bank, Head of Project Maxwell Stamp LLC, EU TACIS, UK
  • Corporate communications projects include
    • Russian Central Bank
    • Russian Railways, Russia’s 4th largest company by revenue and one of the largest transport companies in the world. Since 2004 (online as of February 2006). Russian Railways employs about 1 million people
    • Basic Element, one of Russia’s largest private companies and diversified industrial groups across six sectors: energy & mining, manufacturing, financial services (banking, insurance, pension funds & leasing), construction & real estate, agribusiness and airport management, as well as media and port management. It employs 250,000 people
    • The Razgulay Group (Группа «Разгуляй»), a quoted company and one of Russia’s leading agricultural holdings
    • Rosneft Oil Company, Moscow
      • including work on Rosneft’s 2007 $10.7 bn IPO on the London Stock Exchange and on the Russian venues of RTS and MICEX in Moscow, the largest IPO to that date in Russia and the fifth largest in global financial history
    • International Information Department, YUKOS Oil Company, Moscow
    • Strategist to owner/chairman of a Moscow bank
  • Author, Doing Business in Yemen, 2005, a 200-page guide