John Lynch is an American entrepreneur who lives in Krakow, Poland since 1991.  He was one of the first expats to launch a start-up in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the fall of communism.   

 His company LYNKA is a European leader in corporate clothing, workwear and sportswear. Lynka has grown to become one of Europe’s leading manufacturers in its field. LYNKA started with three employees and very little capital and has grown to over 300 employees.  Today, Lynka supplies businesses in 25 European countries with imprinted apparel.

 John has a distinguished business background. From 1992, John was the marketing director for the First Polish American Bank – an early investment of the Polish American Enterprise Fund. Before coming to Poland, John worked in management at Procter & Gamble, Bristol-Myers and Schering Plough. He was also a senior management consultant for the world-renowned consultancy, Marakon Associates in New York City.

 In 2014, John was awarded the highest civilian honor in Poland, the Order of the Gold Cross from the President of Poland, for his contributions to building Poland’s free market economy during the past 25 years.  In 2017, John was voted CEE’s Ex-Pat CEO of the Year. He is former Chairman of YPO Poland, and a Board member of AmCham Poland.  John has been named AmCham’s Entrepreneur of the Year.  After the outbreak of the Ukraine war, John co-founded Corporate Aid for Ukraine (CAU) which raised substantial funds from Americans and US companies to support Ukraine.

John graduated from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. John completed his MBA at The Wharton School of Business and completed programs at I.E.S.E in Barcelona, and UMIST in Manchester as well.

John has been frequently featured in the Polish and International press as a role model for doing business in Poland, including the Financial Times, The Economist, Wall Street Journal and US News and World Report.  In 2022, he was a special guest on CNN’s Smerconish show broadcast from the Bristol Hotel in Warsaw, to discuss the Ukraine war and Poland’s historically unprecedented humanitarian response to supporting Ukrainian refugees.

 In 1994, John founded the Kraków branch of the American Chamber of Commerce in Poland. He was first elected to the Board of Directors of AmCham Poland in 2002 and has served ever since. John is fluent in Polish and Spanish, as well as his native English.