Polish diplomat Maja Wawrzyk currently serves as Deputy Executive Director of the International Visegrad Fund. (source: International Visegrad Fund)
The first time Maja Wawrzyk heard about the International Visegrad Fund, she was nowhere near Bratislava, nor did she imagine she would one day be working there. But in diplomacy, paths cross in unexpected ways.
The Polish diplomat first heard about the Fund over a decade ago when she was in Romania. At the time, Wawrzyk was working as Director of the Polish Institute, and her friend, the director of the Czech Centre in Bucharest, had just finished serving as the Fund’s first deputy executive director.
“He was extremely enthusiastic about the Fund,” she recalls.
That enthusiasm was infectious. He spoke of how, in its early years, the Fund – which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year – had been an ambitious experiment in regional cooperation, building cultural and professional bridges between the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.
Wawrzyk listened with interest but without any particular personal investment. It seemed like a fascinating project, but her career was on a different track.
But 12 years later, that conversation proved pivotal.
When the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced an open call for a new deputy executive director at the Fund, Wawrzyk did not hesitate. She saw the opportunity not just as a natural extension of her diplomatic career but as a chance to step beyond the purely Polish sphere and engage in a broader regional mission.
After years of working in different fields of diplomacy in France, Romania and Moldova, she saw the Fund as the ideal blend of project management and international cooperation. She was drawn to its dynamism, the way it turned people’s visions into practical initiatives. She is, after all, she says, a woman of action – someone who thrives on organising, planning and making things happen.
“I knew from the beginning it would be a very pleasant professional experience,” she says.
And so, when the Polish rotation came up, she applied, and the ministry chose her. She was soon on her way to Bratislava – armed not just with experience but with advice from that Czech friend who had first introduced her to the organisation.
