The next guest of the “Star Speaker” series will be John Borrell, a New Zealand journalist and businessman, settled in Kashubia.

As a journalist he travelled all over the world, and as a war correspondent he met Ryszard Kapuściński. From him he heard about Poland. Now he runs a guesthouse with his wife near Kartuzy, and has also founded a local newspaper and a vineyard. The guest of the next edition of the Star Speaker series – John Borrell – has an extremely colorful biography, which can be compared to the pages of history from Ernest Hemingway’s novels. He devoted most of his life to his passion for journalism: he was a war correspondent for 25 years: he watched the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, he covered the Round Stou deliberations, he was at the fall of the Berlin Wall. He was the first foreign correspondent to interview Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki. During the meetings, he will present these extremely colorful stories from the past era, in which he participated and described to the readers of “Time” magazine, and he will also talk about his current activity in building the local community and developing his business – which is his guesthouse “Kania Lodge”, in Sytna Góra near Kartuzy.

The Star Speaker series is a cyclical programme of inspiring lectures with international guests, carried out at Olivia Sky Club in cooperation with Gdańsk’s business, science, politics and media circles. The project is integrated with a series of lectures at Gdańsk universities, dedicated to the Tri-City student community. The aim of the project is to develop and integrate international business relations aimed at strengthening the position of Gdańsk in the global investment perspective.

John Borrell – journalist and businessman. A New Zealander born in New Plymouth, he is a former foreign correspondent for Time magazine, which covered wars in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, and later the fall of communism in Eastern Europe from 1989 to 1992. He has been living in Kashubia for 15 years and runs the “Kania Lodge” guesthouse in Sytna Góra near Kartuzy, which, according to the New York magazine “Wine Spectator”, has “one of the most unique restaurant wine lists in the world.” The hotel has its own vineyard, which John takes care of personally. John is also the owner of Wine Express – the first Polish mail-order house specializing in wines, founded 20 years ago and still thriving today. In addition, together with his eldest son William, he is a partner in the company Vestal Vodka dealing with the production of traditional vodkas from potatoes grown in Kashubia and other regions of Polish. In the UK and France, it has become a cult vodka – it can be found in the luxury department store “Harrods” and in the Claridges and Savoy hotels in London, as well as in the Ritz hotel in Paris. His memoirs from more than two decades in Poland entitled
“The White
Lake” in the Polish version was published under the title “
On the White Lake”.

Organizers of the meeting:

• Olivia Business Centre
• Gdańsk Global Foundation
• University of Gdansk
• Academy of Fine Arts
• City of Gdansk

Business Partners:

• Business Center Club – Lodge Gdańsk
• Employers of Pomerania
• Gdansk Business Club
• Hotel Sheraton

Media patronage:

• Radio Gdansk
• Dziennik Bałtycki
• Gdansk.pl
• My3miasto.pl