Zhanna Nemtsova

Zhanna Nemtsova is Co-Founder of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, a Germany-based nonprofit that develops educational and research programs. She is also President of the Foundation for Democracy and Liberal Values (FDLV), a U.S.-based nonprofit that supports independent Russian-language media and the production of non-fiction and popular science books, and Co-Director of the Boris Nemtsov Academic Center for the Study of Russia at Charles University in Prague.

At Charles University, Nemtsova co-leads the accredited M.A. program in Russian Studies – Boris Nemtsov Educational Program, launched in 2023. The interdisciplinary program prepares a new generation of experts on contemporary Russia by combining the study of its politics, society, economy, history, and culture. The program cooperates with the Stanford U.S.-Russia Forum (SURF) and other international academic partners. At FDLV, Nemtsova oversees grantmaking to independent Russian-language media and programs supporting non-fiction books on Russia’s political and social realities and popular science books in Russian.

Nemtsova previously worked as a journalist at Deutsche Welle, Germany’s public international broadcaster, where she covered international politics and hosted the television program Nemtsova. Interview. Earlier, she was an anchor and financial journalist at RBC Television, a Moscow-based business television network. She also co-hosted and executive-produced Another Russia, an English-language narrative podcast produced with Crooked Media, and is the author of the Russian-language bestselling book My Father’s Daughter.

Nemtsova was a 2017 Draper Hills Summer Fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), in the program now known as the Fisher Family Summer Fellows Program on Democracy and Development. Her work has been recognized with the U.S. Department of State’s International Women of Courage Award, the Polish government’s Solidarity Prize, and the Press Emblem Campaign’s Prize for the Protection of Journalists. She studied World Economics at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).