Adrian Karatnycky, Managing Partner

Adrian Karatnycky is the founder and Managing Partner of the Myrmidon Group LLC. For over a decade he was the President and CEO of Freedom House, a major pro-democracy and economic reform non-governmental organization. In the 1980s, he played a leading role in offering assistance to and building support for Poland's Solidarity movement. In 1989, he began working in Ukraine with reformist forces and over the years he has developed an extensive relationship with Ukraine policymakers, opinion leaders, business leaders, and entrepreneurs. Mr. Karatnycky served as co-director of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations Task Force on the US and the United Nations (2003-4), as co-director of the first World Forum on Democracy (2000), and was a member of the United Nations Blue Ribbon Commission on Ukraine (2005). Educated at Columbia University, Mr. Karatnycky, has co-authored and edited over twenty books focused on the post-Communist space and global trends in reform. A respected expert on Ukraine and Eastern Europe, he writes regularly for Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal.

In recent years, Mr. Karatnycky has advised a number of investment banks, funds, and companies on politics and economic policy in Ukraine. In addition to his role at Myrmidon, Mr. Karatnycky co-founded and volunteers his time with the non-profit Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter and conducts research at the Atlantic Council of US, where he is a Senior Scholar.

John Hewko, Senior Advisor

John Hewko is a Senior Advisor with the Myrmidon Group. From 2004-2009 he was Vice President of Operations and Compact Development at the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a US government agency established in 2004 to deliver US foreign assistance in a new and innovative manner. At MCC, Mr. Hewko was the principal United States negotiator for foreign assistance agreements to 26 countries in Africa, Asia, South America, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. During his tenure, he completed the negotiation of assistance agreements totaling $6.3 billion to 18 countries for infrastructure, agriculture, water and sanitation, health and education projects.

Prior to joining MCC, Mr. Hewko was an international partner with the law firm Baker & McKenzie (B&M), specializing in international corporate transactions in emerging markets. After an assignment in Moscow, he founded and served as Managing Partner of the Kyiv office, followed by almost six years managing the Prague office. Prior to joining B&M, Mr. Hewko worked in Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo for leading Argentine and Brazilian law firms and then with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington and New York handling South American and project finance transactions. From 1991-92, he was Executive Secretary to the International Advisory Council to the Ukrainian Parliament where he advised various Ukrainian parliamentary commissions in drafting the initial Ukrainian laws on foreign investment, anti-competition and corporations. He also assisted the working group which prepared the initial draft of the Ukrainian constitution.

Mr. Hewko received his A.B. from Hamilton College, M.Litt. from Oxford University (St. Antony's College), where he studied as a Marshall Scholar, and earned his law degree at Harvard University. From 2001-02, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was for several years an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University Law Center. He speaks Ukrainian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Czech.

He advises clients on a broad range of issues relating to investment in emerging markets, with a particular focus on Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America.

Berel Rodal, Senior Advisor

Berel Rodal has provided executive leadership and strategic, planning, and management advice to governments, and since 1990, to companies. His professional experience as a senior official in the Government of Canada included policy, planning, and executive responsibilities in the foreign affairs, international trade, defense, security and intelligence, economic and social domains, and in managing across jurisdictions; his career involved him in many of the central challenges facing government during his twenty-two years of public service. He served in the Department of External Affairs and in the Cabinet/Privy Council Office in the Government of Canada; as Secretary of the Steering Committee on national unity in the Cabinet Office during the period of the (first) Quebec referendum; as Director-General of the Policy Secretariat in the Department of National Defence; and as a member of Canada’s negotiating team in the Canada-US Free-Trade negotiations.

He has lectured in Canada, the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Japan on governance and the state, federalism and intergovernmental relations, nationalism and political identity, international relations, ‘information-age’ issues, international trade, and strategic policy/international security affairs. He was born in Montreal and was educated at McGill University and Balliol College, Oxford.

Myroslava Luzina, Associate

Myroslava Luzina is the Myrmidon Group’s liaison in Ukraine. She holds an MA in philology and an undergraduate degree in law from the Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University, and an MBA from the Kyiv Mohyla Business School.

Her job experience includes positions of a university teacher and of a parliamentary staff member for a leading Ukrainian legislator and former foreign minister. She has also done a prestigious one-year internship at the German Bundestag and has served as the liaison in the organization of major North American business conferences focused on Ukraine. She is fluent in English, German, Ukrainian, and Russian.