Wanda Rapaczynski has flourished in many contexts. She has been a Pole and an American, an academic and a businesswoman, a banker and a publisher.

A Polish immigrant who came to the United States at the age of 21 in 1968, Rapaczynski earned a PhD in Psychology at New York University and an MBA from the Yale School of Management, then rose to the rank of vice president of Citibank. Later, following the overthrow of communism in Europe, she took her business skills back home and became a leader of the new capitalist Poland.

From 1992 to 2007, Rapaczynski served as the CEO of the publishing company Agora SA. Under her leadership, Agora's flagship newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, became the largest newspaper in eastern Europe. At a crucial time in the organization's growth, Rapaczynski obtained foreign financing from an American media company and then guided the company through a successful public offering on the Warsaw stock exchange. She also helped Agora to expand from a newspaper publisher into a multimedia conglomerate comprising radio, magazines, internet, outdoor advertising, and book publishing. 

Later Rapaczynski guided the company through several crises. When the company was faced with an extortion scandal that potentially implicated the highest levels of the Polish government, Agora's leadership refused to pay a bribe, even though it would have benefitted the company financially. Rapaczynski also guided the company through a period of competitive pressure as large European media companies attempted to take Agora's market share. Throughout her leadership of the company, she nurtured a corporate culture that set a standard for transparency and ethics, rewarded employees with stock options, and established a foundation with a number of charitable outreaches.