Jan Dobrovský

Jan Dobrovský (* July 30th 1960) is a Czech businessman, journalist and philantropist. According to the Forbes magazine he, along with his partners from the bpd partners corporation Petr Pudil and Vasil Bobela, are among the top 100 richest Czech businessmen, with an estimated 6.6 billion Czech crowns in assets.
==Life==
Dobrovský is the son of a Czech journalist, columnist, dissident and a politician Luboš Dobrovský.
Jan Dobrovský couldn't study at a grammar school due to political reasons, and as such he instead chose to study at and graduate from a secondary agricultural school. He sent several unsuccesful applications for a full-time study at the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, after which he was admitted for distance learning. His studies were however declared null and void on formal grounds after several semesters because of an intervention by StB. Because of his family origin he was only allowed to do manual labor prior to 1989.
He got fully involved with samizdat in the second half of the 1980s, especially in Lidové noviny. He was instated as the distributor of exile literature, materials for production of Original videojournal and correspondence between Czech dissent and its foreign supporters. He was instated as such on the basis of a wish by Jiřina Šiklová and Vladimír Mlynář as a replacement for Jan Ruml after Ruml's time in prison.
His feuilletons and short stories were printed out in various samizdat publications. Some of them were also published in the samizdat editorial series Expedice.
==Work career==
===Lidové noviny===
He was actively engaged with the editorial team of the samizdat Lidové noviny prior to 1989. Dobrovský contributed along with other journalists and friends to the founding of a legal variant of Lidové noviny, the first issue of which was released in spring of 1990, and he continued to be engaged within the restored Lidové noviny until 1992.
=== Czechoslovakia television and Czech television ===
Dobrovský switched to ČST in 1992, where he became a deputy editor-in-chief of Televizní noviny and also managed the television newsroom.
After the federal ČST ceased its broadcast in 1993 he continued as the newsroom manager for ČT 2 during the intendation period overseen by Jan Štern.
===Business history===
Dobrovský directed the office of Karel Schwarzenberg in the Czech republic between the years 1994 and 1997. His focus there was on wide-ranging restitutions and the followup administration of the property. Dobrovský then worked as a consultant to and a partner of Becker & Poliakoff consulting from 1997 to 2003. His focus was on lobbying and investments of foreign investors in the Czech republic, mainly into telecommunications, and the food and energy industries. During this period he was also consultant for ČSOB and its CEO Pavel Kavánek for its acquisition of IPB. Dobrovský was member of the board of directors for the drug addiction prevention and treatment centre Drop In, which focuses on prevention and treatment of drug addiction. Dobrovský was member of the supervisory board of the Czech Coal company (formerly known as Mostecká uhelná) from 2004 to 2008, and later became its chairman from 2008 to 2011. Dobrovský afterwards sold his stake in the company which was worth several billion to Pavel Tykač in 2010.
In 2011 Dobrovský established family office bpd partners together with Petr Pudil and Vasil Bobela, which manages their family assets. Bpd partners also manages a holding company REN Power which operates renewable energy sources. Another significant managed corporation is bpd development, which built the administration complex PPF Gate, office buildings BLOX and TELEHOUSE which are both located in vicinity of the Victory square (Vítězné náměstí), or the Royal Triangle residential area in the Střešovice neighborhood in Prague. 
Bpd partners entered into a traditional manufacturer of cyanide chemistry Draslovka chemical plant Kolín in 2012. The Draslovka company announced in 2021 that it intends to become a global player in the production of cyanide chemistry. In june 2021 the company announced an agreement to purchase a manufacturer of sodium cyanide from the Sasol South Africa Limited corporation located in Sasolburg, South Africa. In July the company bought the largest producer of solid sodium cyanide worldwide, the Mining Solution division of The Chemours Company in Memphis, Tennessee, USA. Acquisition of this company was finalized by the end of November. Acquisition of the South Africa corporation is in proceedings is under continuation.
The bpd partners group is a significant investor in a number of start-up projects focused on biotechnolgy, medicine, food and other top of the line technologies. A cutting edge health clinic is a component of the bpd partners group since 2021, the clinic goes by the name of My Clinic.
=== Philantropy and interests ===
Dobrovský primarily supports the activities of POST BELLUM, an organization which documents historical testimony of historical witnesses of historical events of the 20th century. Its primary focus is the Memory of Nations project. Dobrovský acts as the chairman to the Memory of Nations associated group. Dobrovský together with Petr Pudil received in 2021's Businessman of the year an award from Czech Television for contribution to culture and arts for their support of the Post Bellum project. 
Dobrovský began work in 2021 together with journalist Jindřich Šídlo on the podcast Paměti Národa. The podcast reminisces key moments of modern Czech history and comments on current events in politics and of life in the Czech republic in the form of interview. Dobrovský often appears in media as a commentator of contemporary political and social events.
Dobrovský has a lifelong interest and is engaged in photography. His first public exhibition was in 1988 in the theater of E. F. Burian. His interest at the time was photographing Prague still lifes, but has moved on to documentary photography since. The black and white images capture the everyday lives of people that he meets on his travels domestically and abroad.
In 2018 Dobrovský founded a photographic association 400 ASA, together with other significant Czech photographers such as Tomki Němec, Antonín Kratochvíl, Jan Mihaliček, Alžbeta Jungrová, Karel Cudlín and Martin Wágner. The association focuses on promotion of documentary photography, organization of thematic exhibitions and publishing of books. 400 ASA operates exhitibion and social spaces in the restored substation in Prague Smíchov 400 ASA Gallery.
Category:1960 births
Category:Czech people
Category:Businessmen
Category:Journalists
Category:Philanthropists