Dr. Urban Rusnák became Secretary General of the Energy Charter Secretariat in January 2012. He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas in 1990 with an M.Sc. and received his Ph.D. from the Ankara University Institute of Social Sciences in 1998.
Prior to his appointment with the Energy Charter Secretariat, Dr. Rusnák worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic and was the Leader of the Project for Slovakia's External Energy Security. He was Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Slovak Republic to Ukraine (2005-2009), Head of the MFA Political Analysis Division (2003-2005), Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of the Slovak Republic in Turkey (1994-1998) and MFA Desk Officer for South Caucasus, Central Asia, CIS and South East Europe.
Since becoming Secretary General, Dr. Rusnák has focussed his efforts on the modernisation of the Energy Charter Process, and on the updating of the institutional arrangements for the Conference. Besides his mother tongue, Dr. Rusnák speaks English, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, French and Hungarian. Dr. Rusnák is married and has two children.