Svetlana Alexievich named among Forbes 50 over 50 list

Belarusian author and Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich has been featured on Forbes magazine’s 50 over 50 list, celebrating influential women over 50 from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

The publication recognised Alexievich as “a critic of dictatorial regimes”, whose writing “has been hailed for its focus on the individual and the underlying humanity of people caught in a crisis.” It also outlines the author’s political involvement in the Belarusian Coordination Council, set up in 2020 to oppose longstanding dictator Alexander Lukashenko with a commitment to democratic values. So far, Alexievich is the only member of the council who has not been arrested, largely because the writer fled the country for Germany in the autumn of 2020.

Other Eastern European leaders included on the list are Bulgaria’s Kristalina Georgieva, who has been a Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund since 2019, businesswoman Kasia Kieli, who is responsible for Discovery Channel’s Polish platforms, the network’s biggest international operation, and Bulgarian computational physicist Ana Proykova, who is an ardent promoter for women in STEM. Two business empresses, Anca Vlad from Romania and Filya Zhebrovska from Ukraine, who chair big pharmaceutical companies in their respective countries, also join the list.