After Graduating, He Started Work As an Economist in the Company Meat Industry of the Eastern

Martin Dvořák was born in Prague, on the 11th of November, 1956. His family moved to Pardubice not long afterwards, where he completed his primary and secondary education. In 1978, he was accepted to the Faculty of Finance at the Prague School of Economics, from which he graduated with honors in 1982.

After graduating, he started work as an economist in the company Meat Industry of the Eastern Bohemia, though he was later transferred from the economics division down to the technical division, on account of his disagreements with the communist regime, and was later even transferred into meat production.

In March of 1990, he was coopted as the Vice-Chairman of the National Committee for the District of Hradec Králové. In the communal elections of 1990, he was elected to the position of mayor of Hradce Králové. In the municipal elections of 1994, he successfully achieved re-election as mayor.

He was present at the conception of the Association of Towns and Municipalities of the Czech Republic, served as a member of its presidency from 1992 to 1996, and served as its vice-chairman between 1994 and 1996. He was a member of the Scientific Board of the University of Pardubice and the University of Education in Hradec Králové. From 1992-1998 he was a substitute delegate to the European Chamber of Regions.

In the summer of 1999, he was invited by the European Chamber to participate in the United Nations Administrative Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), where he served as the administrator of the cities Istog/Istok and Gjakovë/Ðakovica for the next 28 months, and for a short time also headed the Department of Development of the Local Authority in the Pejë/Peć region. He described his experiences of this mission in the book 'Kosovo, Under My Skin', which was published in Czech in 2001, with a foreword written by President Václav Havel, and published in English later that same year. Subsequently, it was also translated into Albanian and Slovak.

After the conclusion of his mission, he became the first foreigner to be named an honorary citizen of the Istog/Istok municipality.

From July of 2003, he worked in Iraq as one of the Czech experts helping the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Basra establish local government in the provinces of Maysan, Basra, Dhi Qar and Muthanna in the southern part of Iraq, and was later invited to join the administrative team of the Council for International Coordination (CIC) in Baghdad, where he worked as Deputy Director of the Donor Coordination Department. During his work in Iraq, he published a series of articles on the post-war reconstruction of Iraq in the MF Dnes daily.

He has been employed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic since April 1st, 2004. In the autumn of the same year, he briefly worked in Ukraine as an OSCE observer during the first and second rounds of the presidential election. From January 2005 to August 2009, he worked as a business counselor at the Czech Embassy in Washington DC. After returning from this mission, he was appointed Director of the Department of Bilateral Economic Relations and Export Support at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic. He remained in this position until August 2012, when he was appointed Consul General to the United States of America in New York. He finished this mission in July 2017.

In September 2017 he became the Czech Ambassador to Kuwait and Qatar.

He speaks English, Russian and German, partially Polish.

His hobbies include theater, music, literature and sports.

He has been awarded the golden Janský medal for volunteer blood donors, for having donated more than 50 times. He was also awarded the Golden Commemorative Medal of the University of Education in Hradec Králové for merit in the development of the College, the Bronze and Silver Commemorative Medals of Charles University for Merit for the Development of Science, Culture and Education, the Memorial Medal of the Military Medical Academy of Jan Evangelista Purkyně for merit in the development of military medical education, the NATO Medal for helping with the expansion of NATO and also the AG Bell medal for the Development of Telecommunications in the Czech Republic. In 2016 he was awarded the Celestine Opitz Prize.

He is married for the second time, and has daughters Dora (* 83) and Elizabeth (* 85) and son Adam (* 99).