Amb. Dr. Réka Szemerkényi is a leading geopolitical expert, consultant, high level speaker and university lecturer in trans-atlantic security and energy security with over 20 years of experience in a variety of government, academic and private sector capacity. She is currently non-resident Senior Advisor in Transatlantic Strategy at IRI, the International Republican Institute in Washington DC. Between 2017-2020, she was Executive Vice President of the Washington think-tank CEPA, the Center for European Policy Analysis. Earlier, she was research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, IISS, in London. 

Her government roles include her mission as Ambassador of Hungary to the United States (2015-7) and National Security Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister of Hungary (2011-5, 1998-2002). Her business experience includes Senior Advisor to the Chairman and CEO of MOL Group, the Hungarian Oil and Gas Company (2006-11) and Consultant of the World Bank (1994). 

She earned her PhD (2006) at the Pazmany Peter University in Budapest in Soviet energy strategies towards the CEE satellite countries. She holds MA Degrees from SAIS, the Johns Hopkins University (1995), from IEHEI, France (1991) and from ELTE (1990), Budapest. Ambassador Reka Szemerkenyi is Board Member of the Fulbright Association, and has several international awards and recognitions, as the Order of Merit of the French Republic and the Award Bene Merito donated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland. She is Honorary University Professor of the National Public University in Hungary and Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters of Marymount University, VA (2017). She is mother of four (23, 21, 20 ,15) and has a distant-adopted child in Haiti (10).