Alexandra Vacroux is Executive Director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. Her scholarly work addresses many Russian and Eurasian policy issues and she teaches popular courses on the comparative politics of Eurasia and post-Soviet conflict. As Director of Graduate Studies for the Davis Center’s MA program in regional studies, she has mentored dozens of Harvard’s best and brightest students and regional experts.
Alexandra lived in Moscow from 1992 to 2004. While there she held a number of positions, including consultant for the Russian Privatization Agency; partner and head of sales at the Brunswick Warburg investment bank; and active member of the board of United Way Moscow. While completing her dissertation on corruption in Russian pharmaceutical markets she was affiliated with the Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR), a Russian think tank associated with the New Economic School. Prior to joining the Davis Center in 2010 lived in Washington, DC, where she was a Scholar at the Kennan Institute, part of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Alexandra received a Dean’s Distinction Award from Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and was given the Alumni Award from the Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) Program at Tufts.
As a commentator, she has been praised as "refreshing," "straightforward," and "quick and to the point." She has appeared on NPR, CNN, Fox News Radio, China Central TV, Hromadske TV (Ukraine), and speaks regularly at community forums at home and abroad.
She holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University.
Alex was my student in 1985 as a freshman in the very first initiative I created at Tufts University, the colloquium Quidnuc of the Experimental Colleges’ Advisory Committee on Intellectual Life (ACOIL), and its subsequent symposium “International Terrorism”. She was critically instrumental in the creation of my penultimate symposium, decades later in 2015, on The Future of Russia. She was perhaps the only person, besides myself, who could recognize the sad irony of each symposium, opening with the 2 assassinations: the first of Swedish Prime Minister, Olof Palme, and the second of a friend democracy and human rights activist, Boris Nemstov.
One could easily recognize her intelligence, thoughtfulness, and understated brilliance even as an 18 year old. It has been my delight to have her as a friend for all these decades.