Kira Rudik

Kira Oleksandrivna Rudik (Кіра Олександрівна Рудик; born 14 October 1985) is a Ukrainian politician currently serving as a People's Deputy of Ukraine from the proportional list of the Holos party.

She is additionally the party's leader, and Vice President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE).

Prior to politics she worked in the Ukrainian and American IT industries.

She was a member of the board of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine and the IT Association of Ukraine.

Kira Rudik was born on 14 October 1985 in Uzhhorod.

In 2002, she graduated from school No. 1 in Uzhgorod with an in-depth study of the English language.

While studying at school, she participated in Olympiads in mathematics, physics, chemistry, the Ukrainian language and other subjects.

Graduated from a music school with two majors: piano and percussion instruments.

In 2005, in the third year of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kira started working in the IT field at Software MacKiev.

Since 2007, she has tested software at TAIN Ukraine.

In 2008, she obtained a Master's degree at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, defending her thesis on the topic "Automated agent-oriented systems in control systems and technologies".

She worked as a manager of several IT projects, in particular American MiMedia (2010—2013) and TechTeamLabs (2013—2016).

Since 2016, she has been the chief operating officer of Ring Ukraine.

In 3 years, under her leadership, the company increased its staff in Ukraine from ten to a thousand employees with offices in three cities, and the company was considered the most innovative development office in Ukraine.

A 2018 graduate of the Stanford Women's Executive Program.

In 2018, Ring was sold to Amazon for $1 billion, making it the second-largest asset purchase in Amazon's history.

In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Rudik was elected as a People's Deputy of Ukraine as the third member of the proportional list of the Holos party.

In the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament), she became the first deputy head of the Digital Transformation Committee.

She is a co-chairperson of the group on inter-parliamentary relations with Singapore and a Member of the inter-factional association "Equal Opportunities", which aims to ensure gender equality.

As a People's Deputy, Rudik has continued to support the IT industry and opposes tax increases for IT professionals.

In addition, she is a co-author of a number of draft laws In the Committee on Digital Transformation, she has been working on such projects as the switching to the "Paperless" mode in governance; introduction of the world's first digital passports; "state in a smartphone" project implying digitalization of public services and harmonization of legislation with the EU space; introduction of public electronic registers.

In addition, she is a co-author of a number of draft laws in the field of economy, social protection, animal protection.

On 12 December 2019, Rudik became the co-chair of the Humane Country Association, created on the initiative of the UAnimals to protect animals from cruelty.

As part of work at Humane Country, she is engaged in advocacy and promotion of laws regarding the humane treatment of animals.

In particular, they established by law the responsibility for the abuse of animals, and banned fireworks.

Next up is the ban on the use of animals in circuses and dolphinariums.

On 11 March 2020, the congress of the Holos party elected Rudik as the head of the party.

Before that, Sviatoslav Vakarchuk was the head of the party.

In July 2020, Rudik announced the transition of the party to the opposition.

Rudik has claimed that Holos is the first liberal party to form a faction in the Verkhovna Rada.

Under Rudik's leadership, the party successfully took part in the 2020 Ukrainian local elections, securing the election of more than 300 of its representatives to local councils, including in Kyiv, Lviv, Rivne and 50 other cities and communities.

More than 50% of deputies elected by Holos are women.

Under Rudik's leadership, Holos also became the first of the parliamentary parties of Ukraine to receive full membership in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE).

On 4 September 2020, Russia included Rudik in the list of persons subject to special economic measures.

On 4 June 2022, she was elected Vice President of the ALDE, for the first time in history from among countries that are not members of the EU.

As the Vice President of ALDE, on the eve of the decision to grant Ukraine the status of a candidate for EU membership, she made a working visit to Brussels, where she held political meetings in support of the historic decision with European parliamentarians.

At ALDE she is focused on ensuring the interaction of liberal parties with Ukraine and promoting interests of Ukraine in the European Parliament; representation of countries outside the EU (Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Iceland and Norway); acceleration of the EU enlargement process (first of all, European integration of Ukraine); advocacy for female leadership within the framework of the "Alliance of Her" program.

In November 2022, she received the Women In Politics Champion of the Year Award from The Alliance of Her.

With the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Rudik has taken an active part in forming sustainable international support for Ukraine.

On the day of the Russian invasion, she was in the Verkhovna Rada, where she supported the introduction of martial law and the adoption of all bills necessary for defense.