The Ukrainian government will miss Penny Pritzker's "Chicago style of doing things" now that she has been replaced as the US envoy for the reconstruction, Ukrainian Minister of Strategic Industries Oleksandr Kamyshin said.
Pritzker, who finished her one-year term as envoy this month, gained a reputation within the Ukrainian government as was known for “being short, being accurate, being exact, being straightforward,” Kamyshin told The Hill in a brief interview.
“We always had, as they call it, Chicago style of doing things,” he added. “She was always the one who could pick up the phone and make the right talk with anyone in U.S. and as well as Ukraine. So for the new special representative it would be quite a challenge to over perform.”
Pritzker, a billionaire hotel heiress who served as commerce secretary in the Obama administration, is being replaced as special representative by Richard Verma, currently the deputy secretary of state for Management and Resources.
He has also served as ambassador to India and worked as chief legal officer and head of global public policy for Mastercard and as vice chair of The Asia Group consulting firm.
In a parting speech in Washington, DC earlier this month, Pritzker called for "whole-of-government reconstruction planning" in Ukraine to prepare for a surge of works to rebuild after the war.
"The Ukrainian government has pieces of what is required to implement this type of whole-of-government planning, but it needs a surge capacity of technical experts – engineers, planners, program managers," Pritzker said.
She said the technical experts must "work alongside Ukraine’s own civil servants to establish national standards in line with EU-accession requirements, allocate limited resources to the most important efforts, enhance transparency, and ultimately prioritize projects."
