Michaela Bakala

Supervisory Board Member

Michaela Bakala has extensive business and management experience. While she enjoys managing the family´s activities and selected assets, she takes personal pleasure in leading the family´s philanthropic activities, most notably as Chairwoman of the Board of the Bakala Foundation based in Prague. The causes dearest to her are those related to education, the development of democratic society, and women´s role in society. She now lives with her husband and four children in Berkeley, California, and is pursuing her Master´s in Counseling Psychology at the Wright Institute.

Using her degree in film and television, Michaela managed PR and communications for a major industrial company before becoming head of the press department of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS). Michaela subsequently founded her PR agency and beauty contest under the Czech Miss brand, which she ran and co-owned for ten years. Later, she participated in managing family investments in the USA, Switzerland, South Africa, the Czech Republic, and other countries around the world.

The Bakalas were involved in founding the Václav Havel Library in Prague. Michaela has been a member of its Board of Trustees for twelve years. Since June 2023, Michaela has been part of the Advisory Board. With the same commitment, Michaela supports the activities of the FW de Klerk Foundation in South Africa, where she also serves as a board member. Michaela is also a proud patron of the Top Czech Women project, recognizing distinguished women serving in public and private spheres.

Michaela has always had a very strong bond with the Aspen Institute, both in Prague and internationally. She and her husband Zdenek were involved in establishing Aspen Institute Central Europe, then called Aspen Institute Prague, in 2012.

Share this on social media

Support Aspen Institute

The support of our corporate partners, individual members and donors is critical to sustaining our work. We encourage you to join us at our roundtable discussions, forums, symposia, and special event dinners.

Cookies
These web pages use cookies to provide their services. You get more information about the cookies after clicking on the button “Detailed setting”. You can set the cookies which we will be able to use, or you can give us your consent to use all the cookies by clicking on the button “Allow all”. You can change the setting of cookies at any time in the footer of our web pages.
Cookies are small files saved in your terminal equipment, into which certain settings and data are saved, which you exchange with our pages by means of your browser. The contents of these files are shared between your browser and our servers or the servers of our partners. We need some of the cookies so that our web page could function properly, we need others for analytical and marketing purposes.