KATARZYNA KRETKOWSKA
A long-standing local government official and politician from Wielkopolska. She has been a member of the Wielkopolska Regional Parliament since 2024 and serves as a Member of the Board of the Wielkopolska Region for Health, Education, and Social Policy.
Katarzyna Kretkowska spent her childhood in Egypt, India, and Gdynia Orłowo, before moving to Poznań 50 years ago for her studies, where she has lived ever since. An English philologist by training, she graduated with honors in English studies from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań in 1980. In subsequent years, she pursued postgraduate studies in the history of culture and British-Polish relations at the University of Edinburgh (1983), and in Poland, in educational management (1999) as well as European Union law, finance, and economics (2001). She also attended the doctoral seminar of Professor Lech Trzeciakowski at Adam Mickiewicz University.
Professionally, alongside her work in local government and the Sejm (the Parliament of the Republic of Poland), she has worked as a university lecturer, teaching cultural history and contemporary socio-political issues of Anglo-Saxon countries. Her career also includes serving as the head of a foreign language center, an English teacher, a school homeroom teacher, and a translator. Additionally, she worked in banking as a specialist in European funds and international promotion, and coordinated numerous international projects.
After completing her studies during the communist era (PRL), she was active in the democratic opposition and the first Solidarity (Solidarność) movement. During this period, she worked at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and collaborated with Puls, an émigré opposition publishing house. Alongside her opposition work, she voluntarily engaged in initiatives supporting women and education, co-founding the Association for Natural Childbirth and Breastfeeding, which was the first organization to fight for the improvement of perinatal care conditions in Wielkopolska. Within the association, she ran a helpline and built international support networks for Polish women, including initiatives like the East-West European Network.
Following the political transition, she co-founded one of the first community schools in Poland – the popular "Dębinka" school in Poznań. As the President of the Poznań Education Association, she was responsible for the establishment and development of the school in the first half of the 1990s. During this time, she also volunteered at the Women's Information Center, which provided legal counsel and support to women in the labor market as well as those experiencing violence.
She has been involved in local government for 32 years. From 1994, she continuously served six consecutive terms as a member of the Poznań City Council until 2018. Between 1994 and 1998, she simultaneously served as a Member of the Poznań City Executive Board, where she was responsible for education, social policy, and housing. Her responsibilities included overseeing the transfer of several hundred schools from the state administration to local authorities, implementing the new law on tenancy and tenant rights protection (including housing allowances), developing collaboration networks between local government and NGOs, and supporting the establishment of neighborhood councils. In 1997, she created Poland’s first innovative Youth Career Counseling Center, securing European funds for its launch.
In the following years of her local government work, she served, among other roles, as the Chair of the Education Committee, where she successfully defended Poznań’s kindergartens and schools against mass privatization and closure. She was also the Deputy Chair of the City Council for two terms and a member of various committees, including culture, spatial planning, social affairs, housing, education, and audit. She was an active advocate for education, the development of local government, social policy, and gender equality. She engaged in creating and advancing citizen initiatives that support children, youth, women, and individuals facing difficult life circumstances. She also co-authored the book “Oni tworzyli Solidarność” (They Built Solidarity), dedicated to the first activists of the Solidarity movement.
From the very beginning, she was also a co-organizer of mass protests against the stripping away of women’s reproductive rights – first in 1993 as the Vice Chair of the Wielkopolska Committee for the Referendum on these issues, and from 2016 onwards as a co-organizer of the Black Protests (Czarne Protesty) and other civic and political initiatives aimed at restoring women’s rights, as well as defending democracy, upholding the Constitution, and safeguarding the independence of the judiciary.
Over the years, she has completed nearly a hundred internships and international study visits, and has been invited dozens of times to represent Wielkopolska and Poland at international conferences addressing local democracy, education, gender equality, and social affairs, among other topics. She has sat on the executive boards of several international initiatives and associations, and currently serves as a member and Poland's representative on the Working Group on Combating Child Trafficking within the Interparliamentary Forum on Security.
Politically, she has been aligned with center-left movements from the very beginning. Following Poland’s political transition, she joined the ROAD party, which later evolved into the Democratic Union (Unia Demokratyczna) and the Freedom Union (Unia Wolności), where she belonged to the Social Democratic Fraction, served as a member of the National Council and the Audit Committee, and led the Women's Rights Section for several years. After the dissolution of the Freedom Union, she served two terms as an independent city councilor, running for the office of Mayor of Poznań and the City Council with her own electoral committee. In 2010, she formally aligned herself with the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), co-founded the left-wing association Polish Initiative (Inicjatywa Polska) in 2015, and won a seat as a Member of the Polish Parliament (Sejm) in 2019 as an SLD candidate.
During her parliamentary term from 2019 to 2023 representing the Left (Lewica), she sat on the Committee on Education, Science and Youth, as well as the Public Finance Committee. She chaired the Parliamentary Group for Migration Policy and the Parliamentary Group for the Future of Food and Innovative Agriculture, and worked within a range of other parliamentary groups, including those dedicated to women's rights, minorities, animal welfare, and the Green Deal. She also served as the Vice Chair of the Wielkopolska Parliamentary Group. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, her parliamentary office in Poznań was used to distribute material aid and provide comprehensive support to refugees arriving in Wielkopolska.
In 2024, she secured a seat as a member of the Wielkopolska Regional Parliament representing the district comprising the Poznań, Gniezno, Śrem, and Środa Wielkopolska counties (poviats), and was elected by the Regional Parliament as a Member of the Board of the Wielkopolska Region. Her portfolio includes overseeing the following departments:
including, among others, 23 educational units managed by the regional government, 19 regional hospitals, regional adoption centers, craft and vocational support centers, health and preventive care programs, as well as projects and grants for lower-tier local governments and community organizations within the broadly defined areas of social policy, healthcare, education, and science.
Politically, she currently serves as the Chair of the Left (Lewica) in Poznań and is a member of the regional executive board and national council of the party. Privately, she is the mother of two fully independent, adult daughters and the grandmother of a six-year-old granddaughter. In her free time, whenever she has any, she enjoys escaping the city to her countryside home, which over the years has provided shelter to dozens of rescued dogs, cats, and ponies. She is an avid swimmer, scuba diver, and runner. She also loves traveling, both to distant destinations and exploring the hidden, unconventional gems of Wielkopolska.
JACEK BOGUSŁAWSKI a local government official in the Northern Wielkopolska Region. He is a graduate of MBA studies - Energy and Climate Policy Management and Executive MBA studies, he holds a diploma accredited by Apsley Business School - London. He graduated from his Master's studies at the University of Szczecin, majoring in economics. He has qualifications for candidates for members of supervisory bodies of companies with the State Treasury participation. Since 2010 (for two terms) - a councillor of the Piła City Council, he has chaired the municipal economy committee. For almost 23 years he ran a business and was also a member of the Business Centre Club and the Northern Wielkopolska Chamber of Commerce. A member of the Board and Deputy Chairman of the Inter-Municipal Association PRGOK 2014-2018, a Councillor of the Piła City Council for the term 2010-2014 and 2014-2018. A member of the Board of LGD “Krajna nad Notecią” until 2018. Since November 2018, he has been a member of the Wielkopolska Region Board, he is responsible for the following:
Regional self-government organizational units such as:
Pursuant to resolutions of the Wielkopolska Regional Parliament:
He is also responsible for contacts with the Wielkopolska Council of Thirty (WR30), i.e. representatives of economic self-government organizations. Since September 2020, he has been a member of the Wielkopolska Regional Council of the Future Industry. Since August 2022, he has been a member of the Economic Area Development Council operating at the Kostrzyn-Słubice Special Economic Zone. An entrepreneur in 1996 - 2018, the President of the National Association of Road Traffic Participants “Świadomy Bezpieczny” in 2013 - 2018, an initiator of many campaigns, including the Citizens' Network for Monitoring Air Quality in Northern Wielkopolska, #ZARAŻAMYDOBROCIĄ - a campaign from the good heart undertaken together with senator Mieczysław Augustyn and the Piła Food Bank, i.e. a collection of money among Wielkopolska entrepreneurs and all other people of good heart, 100% of which is allocated to the purchase of personal protective equipment for the poor in the Northern Wielkopolska and people who deal with distributing food to the poor on a daily basis. He is the author of books and publications. The initiator of many football and chess tournaments. Cooperating with Provincial Road Traffic Centres, police, sports clubs and schools, he supports with his activities and often with financial aid a number of social campaigns aimed at promoting good attitudes, sports, culture and safety of the youngest, but also at their intellectual development. In his free time he likes to play tennis, run and swim... also as a motorboat helmsman. At the request of the Mazovian Voivode, in 2014 he was awarded the BRONZE CROSS OF MERIT for his services to road safety.
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