Program: Budapest Fellowship Program
Year: 2021
Host Institution: Danube Institute
Research Focus: An economic comparison of the family-based demographic policies of Hungary and Poland to the mass-migration policies of Western Europe
Quote: “So much English-language content related to Hungary is distorted or flatly untrue. This manifests itself in statements ranging from people with minimal knowledge of the region to those at the very highest levels of the U.S. government. I hope my work here can contribute in a small way to improving this deficiency.”
Read his introduction here: hungaryfoundation.org
Raised in North Carolina, Michael is half-Polish by descent. He minored in Slavic & East European Cultures while pursuing a business degree at the University of North Carolina. He studied the Polish language during that time and continues to read and write it fluently.
Michael earned his MBA from Indiana University in 2016 and pursued a marketing career afterward. He continued to fulfill his love of Central and Eastern Europe in an extracurricular sense and served as president and vice-president of the Polish-American Club of Columbus, as well as a member of the Polish Cultural Council of Western Pennsylvania. He became a Polish citizen in 2020.