Romanian Iryna Angel-Enescu was named the winner of the Distinguished Fellow Award 2023 from the Eisenhower Fellowships organization. Angel-Enescu is the first laureate of its kind in East Central Europe and the second in all of Europe, according to a statement sent by REPER deputy Catalin Tenice, one of the Romanian fellows of the Eisenhower program.

Iryna Angel-Enescu, an entrepreneurship expert at Oxford University’s Said Business School and an advisor at the Harvard Innovation Lab, received a 2008 Eisenhower Fellowship. Since then, Iryna Angel-Enescu has been actively involved in the Eisenhower Fellowships and the work of our fellows around the world, giving generously of her time, energy, and resources to support Eisenhower Fellowship programs, events, and initiatives.

As head of the Eisenhower Fellowships country branch and member of the nomination committee in Romania, Iryna encouraged Romanian fellows and identified outstanding candidates for the program, making Romania one of the most active branches in the global EF network, according to a press release.

Last year, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Iryna was part of a larger effort by Eisenhower Fellows to actively support refugees fleeing war.

Currently, Iryna is an expert in entrepreneurship at Said Business School at Oxford University and an advisor at Harvard Innovation Labs.

Eisenhower Fellowship President, former US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, will present Irina with the 2023 Distinguished Fellow Award at EF’s annual awards dinner on May 17, 2023 in Philadelphia.

The Eisenhower Global Fellowship Program annually welcomes a select number of professionals from around the world in the public, non-governmental and private sectors, leaders in their fields of interest, who are on a mission to solve some of the biggest challenges facing our world. In its seven decades of existence, the Eisenhower Fellowships have enabled more than 2,400 mid-career individuals to define their vision for social activism and realize their plans to make the world a better, more prosperous and more peaceful place through concrete action. Among the participants of the program are people who later became heads of state or government, ministers or heads of the private or non-profit sector.

Subsequently, Monica Macovei, Laura Stefan, Roxana Damasin-Tecu, Catalin Tenice, Caelin Zamfirescu, Dan Pascariu, Tudor Giurgiu, Vlad Mikic, Vlad Voiculescu were among more than 20 Romanian fellows of the Eisenhower Fellowship Program.