Petrit Selimi

Chief Executive Officer of MFK

Petrit SELIMI is the Chief Executive Officer of Millennium Foundation Kosovo, the country’s biggest non-profit tasked with implementing the $49 million Threshold Program, financed by the U.S. federal agency Millennium Challenge Corporation-MCC. He previously served as the National Coordinator of the Office for MCC at the Government of Kosovo, where he led efforts on behalf of the government to reach one of the biggest development aid programs in the history of Kosovo, focused on projects in energy, open data, and gender and social inclusion.

Prior to his engagement with the MCC Programs, Petrit served as Foreign Minister of the Republic of Kosovo in 2016, and as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kosovo in two consecutive mandates from 2010 to 2016. During his tenure in the Government, he established several ground-breaking initiatives in public and digital diplomacy. He was awarded as Team Leader of the Year in Digital Diplomacy in 2013 in a global survey.

During his work in the government and as a civil society activist in his earlier career, Petrit was a promoter of diversity and inclusion, founding several local and regional prize-winning initiatives. He also served as a Member of the Board of Directors of Kosovo Open Society Foundation, established by George Soros and Balkan Children and Youth Foundation, established by Nobel prize winner President Marti Ahtisaari.

Petrit speaks fluent Albanian, English, Serbian, and Norwegian. He has a BA in Social Anthropology from the University of Oslo and as a recipient of the Chevening Scholarship, he studied for an MSc in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics.

He is a recipient of the prestigious Marshall Memorial Fellowship with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and has received the global Doha Award for Interfaith Dialogue.

He has lectured on diverse topics at Yale, Harvard, Georgetown, NYU, George Washington University, and LSE, among others. He has also been featured and profiled in global media, such as the Time Magazine, The Economist, Wired Magazine, The Guardian, BBC, NPR, and more.