CSO
Michael Sheitelman is the Chief Strategic Officer of StrategEast, a strategic center whose goal is to reinforce the values of rule of law and private property protection in Eurasian and Baltic countries and to assist these countries in the process of economic and social transformation. As CSO, Mr. Sheitelman is responsible for defining the organization’s vision and strategy, as well as for the creative development of various projects and programs initiated by StrategEast and in cooperation with other organizations.
Mr. Sheitelman’s extensive and varied experience includes over 20 years of activity as a strategic consultant and senior manager in various international projects, including political campaigns, media management, social and environmental initiatives.
He began his career as a software engineer at Nortel. In 1999 he established his first advertising agency in Israel, which addressed the target audience of Russian speakers. Since then he has served in senior strategic and creative positions.
Mr. Sheitelman has advised election campaigns in Israel, Russia, Latvia and Kyrgyzstan, as well as non-governmental organizations, such as the Russian Jewish Congress.
In 2015 he was a strategic advisor to the campaign headquarters of Israel – Our Home party, resulting in appointment of the party’s leader Avigdor Lieberman for the Minister of Defense.
Michael’s media management experience includes the Internet division of STB media group (Ukraine), launch of a Russian-language TV5 channel and leading its share growth from 2% in 2008 to 9% in 2010.
For almost a decade of managing the LNT Group of TV channels (Latvia), he initiated and executed the group’s purchase by a Dutch business group, which resulted in creating the country’s leading news service, the establishment of news and music niche channels, bringing management and accounting to the Western standards, and, subsequently, sale to the NewsCorp corporation.
Mr. Sheitelman served as a strategic consultant and a board member in a number of international holdings and investment groups.
He has numerous publications as a journalist and in the Russian language media worldwide and is an author of a book on media business management and marketing.
Michael studied physics, mathematics and aerodynamics in St. Petersburg’s Polytechnic University and in Bar Ilan University in Israel, where later he taught mathematical physics.