Stuart Prior fell in love with the Russian alphabet when he first came across it at high school in Dunedin, New Zealand. An emigre Russian Professor at Otago Uni- versity, Dunedin, introduced him to the revolutionary and anarchic Russian soul through exposure to Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Tyutchev and others.

Martin Tate came to Russia via a New Zealand company that developed fisheries and trading interests in the Russian Far East.
Martin's trading interests also led him into the dairy trade. In 1999 he purchased the Far Eastern distribution assets of the New Zealand Dairy Board. Martin's interests also include a pet food processing and distribution company.

Noritsugu Uemura, born in 1957, has been a representative office head at Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. in Moscow since 2007. He has been working for the company almost 30 years, after his graduation from the Economic Faculty of Kobe University.

David Steer was born in 1962 in Sydney, Australia. He started his full time career in 1985 in sales at Philip Morris.
Since then he has lived and worked across Australia, in the United States, Hong Kong and China, South-East Asia, and twice in Russia.

Darrell Stanaford came to Russia in 1995 and became managing director for Russia of an American S&P 500 corporation in 2005. He has been named one of the top five real estate consultants in the Russian market by CRE 100 every year since the list's inception, including #1 in 2009.

Annelies Van Den Belt has been involved with Russia since the early 1990s.
She joined SUP Fabrik in Moscow, Russia as its group CEO in June 2008.

A native of New Zealand, Stephen Jennings has worked in Russia for the last 18 years. He arrived in 1992 and led the State Property Committee’s pilot voucher auctions that established the foundations of Russia’s capital markets.

Marko Blagovic, native of Croatia, is general manager for Dow in Russia and the CIS, and sales director for Dow Plastics in Eastern Europe. Since 1994, Marko has held a variety of positions within the company.

David Thomas was born in 1962 in Wales. In 1995 he graduated from Plymouth University in Business Administration.
David has comprehensive experience across many aspects of the automotive industry, from BMW dealer to analyst for Mercedes Benz, to importer for Volkswagen and Audi in the United Kingdom.

Daniel McGrath first developed an affinity with Russia when he came to Moscow as a student in 1998. He graduated from Leeds University in the United Kingdom in 2001 with a degree in French and Russian and returned for a short visit to develop his language skills.

Based in Moscow, Jonathan C. Knaus is regional vice president Eastern Europe and CIS for Western Union. He has lived in Moscow for 19 years.

Lennart Dahlgren was the first general manager of IKEA in Russia. He is now retired and lives in Sweden, with two grown up daughters and Swedish wife. He cannot give up caring about IKEA in Russia and always defends Russia in all kinds of discussions. He longs to visit Moscow again, especially when bored.