Milan Vašina, who will replace Jana Vohralíková, the current head of the Office of the President of the Republic, spent most of his professional life with the telecommunications operator T-Mobile. In recent years, he led the Central European branch of the American educational organization Aspen Institute. He also worked as an advisor in the Rockaway Capital investment group of entrepreneur Jakub Havrlant.
He was born on February 11, 1969, graduated from the economics faculty of what is now Mendel University in Brno, and began his journey into telecommunications in 1997, when he joined RadioMobil. It was created as a joint venture between Czech Radiocommunications and a consortium led by T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, and in September 1996 it launched the Czech mobile phone network Paegas, the predecessor of the current T-Mobile Czech Republic.
He started as a marketing communications manager and later as a marketing manager for the residential segment. In 2002, he moved to Slovakia, where he became the marketing director of the local company EuroTel (with the Czech company of the same name, one of the predecessors of the O2 operator, at that time they only shared a name, which was born before the federation). It later became Slovak T-Mobile.
In 2007, Vašina became the general director of T-Mobile in Slovakia, and after its merger with the fixed-line operator Slovak Telekom, he was appointed executive director for marketing, sales and customer services in July 2010. From January 2011, he became the CEO of T-Mobile Czech Republic as the first Czech to head a Czech operator after their takeover by foreign owners. Since January 2016, he also led Slovak Telekom.
He left the Deutsche Telekom Group after 21 years in October 2018. “It has been an extremely interesting 21 years, but I feel it is time to make a fundamental change and pass the imaginary baton on. I am grateful to have been able to be part of the development of such an important and dynamic field and could actively participate in completely new things,” he said when announcing his departure.
In addition to working at the Aspen Institute and the Rockaway Capital group, he is also dedicated to charity. Since 2017, he has been a member of the board of directors of the Dobrý anděl foundation, which helps families whose members are dealing with a serious illness.
