Vera Strobachova-Budway is acting Senior Economic Officer and Head of the Economic Governance Unit at the OSCE. She joined the OSCE in January 2019 as Senior Co-ordination Adviser for Gender Issues. She has over 25 years of international public and private sector experience in economic cooperation and development, diversity management, and program and project management.

Prior to joining the OSCE, Vera spent 12 years as Chief Diversity Officer at the Austrian Erste Group Bank AG where she established, developed and managed the company’s first comprehensive Diversity & Inclusion Program for 46,000 employees in 7 countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

Vera began her career in international affairs at the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative (SECI) and the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe in Vienna and Brussels. She is US national and received her Master’s Degree in Political Science and International Relations from Georgetown University (Washington, DC). In addition to her native English, she is fluent in German and Czech, and also speaks Russian and French.

She is an active Rotarian (Rotary Club Vienna Maria Theresia) and a founding member of the Austria Chapter of the International Women´s Forum (IWF).