Our team

Nicolas Kullmann Nicolas Kullmann

Nicolas Kullmann, founder and CEO of Renaissance PR, has a proven track record in providing solutions to complex and confidential problems where communications and public relations are often a key component. His background in television and film, as well as his fluency in Russian, French and English have proved invaluable in many assignments. He started his career at the BBC and has worked on several projects with a Russian bias, including: Portrait of the World USSR (1987) for Turner Broadcasting Systems; A Russia of One's Own (1988) for Channel 4; Global Conflicts which analysed the conflict between the superpowers, made for WNET and WGBH; Pasternak (1990) a dramatization of Boris Pasternak’s life for Lord Bragg’s iconic ITV arts programme the South Bank Show and Dispatches Latvia (1991) for C4 . In the early 1990s, he began working as an adviser to Western and Russian companies, individuals and governments doing business with one another. Since then he has advised numerous clients including the British Government, the British Council, the Yeltsin Foundation and Bell Pottinger Communications. He is a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.


Hugh Barnes
Member of Advisory Board

Hugh Barnes has worked as a journalist and political analyst of the former Soviet Union for a quarter of a century. He worked as a reporter for The Times and The Observer, covering the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, the first Intifada in Palestine and the wars in ex-Yugoslavia (and Albania) for various newspapers in the UK and abroad. In 1999, he reported on the war in Kosovo from behind Serb lines for the Financial Times, New Statesman and Independent on Sunday, and subsequently from Chechnya and Afghanistan (during the 2001 war) for Agence France Presse and the Sunday Times. From 1998-99, he was deputy editor of the International Herald Tribune edition published daily in Greece, and he worked as a senior correspondent for Agence France Presse in Paris and Moscow from the end of 1999 to 2004, seconded to Belgrade, September-December 2000, for the ousting of Milosevic. From 1993 to 1997, while studying for a PhD in Russian literature, he was a part-time tutor at Trinity College Cambridge, and recipient of a British Academy award. He also worked for a couple of years as Executive Editor at Penguin Books. From 2005-06, he was director of the democracy and conflict programme at the Foreign Policy Centre, a think-tank; and, from 2007-08, Russian editor at openDemocracy, for which he helped to launch a joint venture with Russian website polit.ru. He has worked as a freelance reporter in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and regularly appears on BBC World Service, CNN and Al-Jazeera as a commentator. He has also written papers for a number of governmental and non-governmental agencies, mostly about the former Soviet Union and Iran, where he was (in 2006) a visiting fellow at the Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), a branch of the Iranian foreign ministry. His other publications include Special Effects (1994), Glasgow Victim (1995), Gannibal: The Moor of Petersburg (2005), The Stolen Prince (2006), and Understanding Iran (as co-author, 2006). He speaks fluent Russian, Greek and French, plus some Arabic and Spanish, and a bit of Serbo-Croat. A former Principal Lecturer at the University of Westminster, he is currently the managing director of Oblomovism Ltd. www.oblomovism.com



Rupert Wainwright
Senior Consultant

Rupert Wainwright has won awards shooting all over the world for such clients as Reebok, Sprite, ATT, Converse, Honda, Gatorade, Sprint, McDonalds, Deutsche Telekom, Barilla, BP, Disney, Office Depot, WalMart, GHI, Fritos, and many, many others.

He has worked for clients in the US, Europe, Japan, Hong Kong, Canada and South America. His celebrity shoots include Jennifer Lopez, Michael Jordan, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Jackson, Michael Chang, Reba Macintyre, Sinbad, Mos Def, Anjelica Huston, Dennis Rodman, James Brown, Al Gore and President Bill Clinton amongst others.

His work has won him such awards as Adweek's Grand Effie for the year's most effective commercial for his Reebok campaign, a Grammy and multiple MTV awards. One of Wainwright's recent spots, "Dunk Driving" was part of nationally publicized increase in Drunk Driving prevention, and was highlighted on The Today Show and The New York Times.

Wainwright's Olympics commercial was the centerpiece of Russia's successful campaign for the 2014 Winter Olympics and was aired in 142 countries on BBC and CNN International.

Recently, Wainwright also wrote and directed three presentation films for Russia's winning bid for the 2013 Universiade, the second biggest sporting event in the world after the Olympics. www.rwainwright.com