With our annual awards, we celebrate collective accomplishments, but also the individual leaders who stood out and inspired others through their determination in advancing the cause of liberty in their countries and beyond.
An example of such inspiring leadership is Blazej Szkudlarek, our Leader of the Year for 2025, under whose direction our team in Poland has produced one of the most remarkable stories of renewal and fast growth with immediate impact.
When Blazej Szkudlarek joined Students For Liberty, our team in Poland had only a few inactive members and was in need of a restart. In a short span of time, Blazej took on the role of the National Coordinator, and under his leadership, the team quickly started growing and things started moving, just as the country’s illiberal right-wing government was on its way out after 8 years in power.
Blazej made use of the political moment. Under his leadership SFL Poland grew in numbers, gained visibility and credibility. Blazej secured partnerships with organizations and events across Poland, ensuring that the team had a voice wherever pro-liberty conversations were happening. A step towards this was integrating the Club of Austrian Economics into the Students For Liberty network.
The Club hosts events across the country. In the past year, their seminars and lectures took place in more than 10 cities and towns small and large, culminating in the Austrian Economics Conference in Krakow, a major event of the year in the Polish libertarian movement.
Besides that, Blazej led the team to develop a relationship with other organisations in the network, guaranteeing their presence at Miltonalia, Bitcoin FilmFest, Freedom Games and all other significant partner undertakings in Poland.
Under his leadership, the team hosted an astounding 46 academic events over the past year – nearly one per week! – and thus engaged in building a strong grassroots community.
Beyond Poland, Blazej has been instrumental in the campaign in support of Ukraine, Georgia, and Belarus by hosting protests and joint events, and in bringing the Polish network to the Ukrainian Renaissance Conference in Lviv in July 2024. Most recently, he led the efforts to rebuild the Polish team’s social media channels from scratch, using it to directly combat Russian disinformation and hybrid warfare – a vital effort as Russian drones now begin to target Poland.
Not only for his individual achievements, but also for his work on network building and motivating and supporting the volunteers that joined his team, Blazej is our Leader of the Year.
