By Pete Carey

When Russian President Dmitry Medvedev came to Silicon Valley this week to sample the valley’s innovative culture firsthand, no one had worked harder to make it happen than a group headed by a young Russian-born investor and entrepreneur from Menlo Park.

Anna Dvornikova, 32-year-old president of the American Business Association of Russian-Speaking Professionals (AmBAR), co-founded the group with some colleagues to promote Silicon Valley as a model for Russian tech startups and to encourage American investors to explore business opportunities in Russia. She brought a group of venture capitalists, mostly from the valley, to Moscow to meet with Medvedev and other Russian officials in May. So when Medvedev decided to visit the valley three weeks later, it was natural to turn to her group to help organize his visit.

Dvornikova was AmBAR’s most visible representative during the presidential visit, sitting near Medvedev as he chatted for an hour at a Palo Alto cafe with AmBAR members Wednesday afternoon.

The daughter of a doctor and the head of Russia’s largest job retraining center, Dvornikova came to the United States a little over 10 years ago on a MacArthur Foundation scholarship to study international relations at Stanford and decided to stay.

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