Olena Babakova is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. Babakova is a Polish-Ukrainian journalist covering migration, international relations, civil society, and women’s rights for Polish and international media. Her columns and reports are regularly published by Gazeta Wyborcza and Krytyka Polityczna in Poland, and European Pravda in Ukraine.

Babakova gained journalistic experience as a correspondent for the Polish Radio External Service from 2011 to 2016. Since 2017, she has worked as media and research projects coordinator at Fundacja WOT, a nongovernmental organization designated as an undesirable organization in Russia in 2022 due to its commitment to civil society and human rights. 

Since 2021, Babakova has been teaching journalism at Vistula University. She conducts research on media, migration, and public policy. She was a German Marshall Fund Rethink.CEE fellow from 2020 to 2021. Babakova has a PhD in history from the University of Białystock. She also has an MA in history from Taras Shevchenko University in Kyiv.