Draft:Botond Feledy

Botond Feledy (Budapest, 1981–) is a Hungarian media personality, journalist and foreign policy expert. He is the CEO of Red Snow Consulting and the foreign policy expert of Partizán media, where has a weekly newsletter and various podcasts on geopolitics. He is the founder of international political news platform Kitekintő, former dean of Saint Ignatius Jesuit College for Advanced Studies (between 2012 and 2017), currently the deputy director of the Jesuit European Social Centre in Brussels, director of the European Leadership Programme, and independent political analyst.

Education
He started his legal studies in 2000 at Eötvös Loránd University, where he obtained his degree in 2005. At the same time, he conducted his studies at the International Faculty of Comparative Law (Faculté Internationale de Droit Comparé) and the Université Panthéon-Assas in Paris. He also spent a year at the international law programme of Université Aix-Marseille III. In 2006, he obtained his degree in International Relations at the Institut d’études politiques in Bordeaux. He graduated from the Doctoral School of Eötvös Loránd University with the topic of his doctoral dissertation being the regulation models of lobbying. He spent one year as a DAAD guest researcher at the International Political Economy Institute of Freie Universität Berlin. He was a Marshall Memorial Fellow of the German Marshall Fund in 2018-2019.

Media
He is the foreign policy expert and permanent Brussels correspondent of Partizán media, an independent and crowd-funded Hungarian media platform. There, he has had a weekly newsletter running since 2022, and he also talks about international politics in videos, as well as moderates election countdown and analysis events. He recently launched his own podcast at Partizán on international politics and organizations related to Hungary.

He often appears in Hungarian media, most often on RTL, and is a regular guest in the international economic podcast Millásreggeli on Radiocafé

He has offered commentaries on international politics to Reuters, NPR, The Washington Post, ABCNews, PBS, The Financial Times, FD Netherlands, Les Echos, 24, EurActiv, Helsingin Sanomat, Trend.sk, Dennik N, Le Courrier, The Budapest Beacon, Carnegie Europe, Radio France and EuroTopics, among others.

Career
In 2006, he worked at the European Parliament with Hungarian MEP Péter Olajos. He took notice of how politically prepared the older member states' representatives were, while the Hungarian political elite was struggling with this. Inspired by this observation, in 2007, he founded the Kitekintő international news platform, with the purpose of not only sharing international news translated into Hungarian, but also adding the Hungarian relevance and perspective.

For three semesters, he worked as a teaching assistant at the Economics Institute of Eötvös Loránd University’s Faculty of Law. In 2009, he was a guest lecturer in Dijon, at the Eastern European Studies campus of the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, and later a regular lecturer of the institute’s Spring School.

From 2011, he was the head of MTI’s (Hungarian Telegraphic Office) Foreign Politics section until its integration into MTVA in 2012. In 2012, he became the dean of Saint Ignatius Jesuit College for Advanced Studies. Since 2007, he is the founder and organizer of the negotiation simulation EU Negotiation Moot. He was a lecturer at the International Studies Institute of Pázmány Péter Catholic University. He is an expert of Interkoll’s Qualification Committee. He was a member of Rajk László College for Advanced Studies’ Advisory Committee in 2017-2020. He was a member of the presidency of the Association of Hungarian Talent Support Organizations (MATEHETSZ) in 2017-2021. He is the director of the Institute of Social Reflection.

Since 2019, he has been living in Brussels, as the deputy director of the Jesuit European Social Centre and the director of the European Leadership Programme. He enjoys working with youth whether it be through leadership advocacy, teaching, or working with colleges for advanced studies and various other programs.

He often publishes and speaks at events and in media as a foreign policy expert, consultant and independent journalist. He also has his own business as an international political analyst and consultant focusing on geopolitics, the European Union and Central-Eastern Europe.

He has gained more and more recognition since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022. He aims to filter information and make it easily digestable to non-experts too, and because of his uniquely easy-to-understand and clear style (both in writing and in television appearances), he has often been appearing in media to talk about international events in Eastern Europe.

Family
He is married to novelist and journalist Katarina Durica. They are living in Brussels with their three children. His parents are former Olympic runner Sarolta Monspart and journalist-reporter Péter Feledy.

Botond Feledy is the Vice President of the Sarolta Monspart Foundation for a Healthy Lifestyle (created in his mother's memory), which aims to encourage people–especially women and the elderly–to lead healthy lifestyles through regular exercise and balanced eating.