Education:
- Bachelor of History (Oxford University, UK)
Motivation
From an early age, I considered myself a representative of cosmopolitan European culture, to whom the traditional aspirations and values of the average Lithuanian seemed alien. Driven by this conviction, I refused to read the works of many Lithuanian authors as early as in the eighth grade, before my teacher suggested a slogan for Lithuanian literature: ‘baudžiauninkų – baudžiauninkams’. It was only after spending four years in America and Great Britain that I realised that, intellectually and culturally, Lithuania had given me much more than I had thought when I lived here. My decision to return to Lithuania was born out of a moral imperative – a desire to repay a debt to Lithuania that I had only realised the extent of when I left.
I am an only child, so I will not surprise anyone by admitting that I love my parents terribly. But I don’t know if that would have been a good enough reason to come back if it hadn’t been for the Create for Lithuania programme. I think it gives me a lot of opportunities and tools to give back to Lithuania, even if only a fraction of what it has given me.
