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On January 22, 2025, for the first time in history, ISKRAN was headed by a woman – Natalia Alexandrovna Tsvetkova, an international political scientist and internationalist from St. Petersburg State University.

Tsvetkova is the acting director of the Institute for the US and Canada Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISKRAN), but Alexander Dynkin, Academician Secretary of the Department of Global Issues and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences and President of IMEMO, who introduced her to the Academic Council, expressed hope that she would be approved and that with her arrival, the research center, named after its founder Georgy Arbatov, would get a second wind. “Natalia Alexandrovna is a high-level professional with solid and unique experience in science, education and international activities. Her strategic vision will allow ISKRAN to reach new frontiers,” he said.

Tsvetkova is a professional Americanist, in 2015 she defended her doctoral dissertation “Public Diplomacy as an Instrument of Ideological and Political Expansion of the United States in the World: 1914-2014.” She has worked at the leading university in the northern capital of Russia for a quarter of a century, since 2022 as editor-in-chief of the journal “Bulletin of SPbSU. International Relations.” Now she has, as Dynkin noted at the end of her opening remarks, “boldly accepted a new life and professional challenge.”

The former Acting Director of ISKRAN, Sergey Kislitsyn, now continues to work on ISKRAN's research projects and also holds the position of Deputy Director of IMEMO.