The Voice That Moved Kings, Presidents & Brands: PR Legend of the Year 2026

Earning Every Room He Ever Walked Into

Dr. Maxim Behar did not start at the top. He started in a machinery factory. Five years there, then university, then journalism — not because it was the obvious path from a business management degree at Prague Economic University, but because communication had been in him since he was a teenager. Taking photos in black and white, writing letters by hand, translating books, reading everything he could get his hands on.

When he was a student in Prague, he was doing three things at once. Studying at two universities. Working full-time at Mlady svet, one of the most widely read magazines in the country at the time, with a circulation of millions. And on weekends, sweeping streets. His father was the Bulgarian Ambassador to Czechoslovakia. Maxim swept streets anyway. He wanted to earn his own way, and he did.

That pattern — work first, title later — stayed with him. By the time he came back to Sofia in 1992, he had already spent years as a foreign correspondent, including time in Warsaw during one of the most consequential political shifts of the twentieth century. He launched Standard, one of Bulgaria’s first private daily newspapers. Two years later, he left journalism entirely and started M3 Communications Group, Inc. That was 1994. The company is still running today, thirty years on.

The Correspondent Who Watched an Era End

Warsaw in the late 1980s was not a comfortable posting. It was where the communist system was visibly coming apart, where Solidarity had forced the first partially free elections in the Eastern Bloc, where the streets carried a particular kind of tension that only exists when an old order is losing its grip. Maxim Behar was there as a correspondent, watching it happen.

He does not frame it as a defining moment in the way that phrase usually gets used. He describes it as the most exciting period of his career as a journalist — which, given everything else he has seen and done, says something. The experience of being present when a political system collapses does not leave a person. It sharpens how you read power, how you understand institutions, and what you know about the gap between official language and what is actually happening on the ground. Those are not bad things to understand if you are going to spend the next three decades advising brands and leaders on how they communicate with the world.

Surviving Every Storm, One Skill at a Time

Thirty years in business means thirty years of things going wrong. Maxim Behar does not dress this up. When asked about his biggest challenges, he names two: managing teams, and staying precise in business. Then he says something that most people in his position would not say — that he has not overcome these challenges. He has just kept improving.

That is not false modesty. It is an accurate description of how long-term business survival actually works. M3 Communications Group has outlasted economic crises, political turbulence, the collapse of entire media models, and the complete restructuring of how public relations is practiced in the digital era. The company today manages clients across Europe and beyond, built not on a single big break but on three decades of showing up and delivering. None of that was navigated by having all the answers. It was navigated by not stopping.

In 2019, he graduated from Harvard Kennedy School. In 2024, he earned a PhD from Sofia University. He was running a company the entire time. The learning was not ornamental — it was functional, same instinct that had him reading constantly as a teenager and working three jobs as a student. The method has not changed. The stakes have.

Redefining Leadership One Conversation at a Time

More than thirty years ago, Maxim Behar believed he knew everything and was always right. He will tell you that himself. Back then, decisions came from the top, and that was the end of it.

At some point that stopped working. Not dramatically — just gradually, the results started telling a different story. He began listening more. To managers, to assistants, to people he would have previously talked over. He started taking notes in those conversations instead of waiting for his turn to speak. The shift was not announced, there was no rebranding of his leadership style. It just changed, because the alternative was falling behind.

That kind of adjustment is harder than it sounds for someone who built a company from nothing. It requires admitting, quietly, that the instincts that got you here are not always the ones that keep you here.

The People Who Built Him Before He Built Anything

Over a career that has taken him across continents and into rooms with heads of state, founding presidents, and business leaders, Dr. Behar is consistent on one point: every person leaves something. The cleaner in the office. A random taxi driver. King Charles. Mikhail Gorbachev. Pope John Paul II. Secretary Hillary Clinton. He lists them without hierarchy, which is itself a point of view.

Two people he singles out. Sir James Mancham, the Founding President of Seychelles, who was a friend, mentor, partner, and teacher over many years. And the late Terence Billing, former Executive VP of Hill and Knowlton, one of the most respected PR professionals of his generation, with whom Maxim built a partnership that continues today. His own father, a businessman he describes as great and wise, runs through everything — the talks, the quarrels, the disagreements, the lessons that only come from that particular relationship.

What ties all of it together is that he was always paying attention. Influence does not accumulate passively. It requires being genuinely present in every conversation, and Behar has been doing that since before most people in his industry started their careers.

No Balance. Just Priorities.

Dr. Behar does not claim to have work-life balance. He says there is no balance, and he says it plainly. Work projects, book writing, travel, presentations — these take up majority of his day. Evenings are for family, wine, conversation, films. That is the structure, and it works for him.

His priority for the next year is a stronger, more knowledgeable team. Not a new market, not a new product line, not a rebrand. The team. He has been in this business long enough to know that the quality of people around you is the foundation everything else is built on. When that foundation is solid, everything else follows. When it is not, nothing else compensates for it.

A Doctorate, a Harvard Degree, and Still Counting

His mantra is one line: If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough. He has been living by something close to that idea his entire career, even before he had the words for it.

In 2019, he graduated from Harvard Kennedy School. In 2024, he earned a PhD from Sofia University. In 2026, he completed the full Adult Advanced Astronauts program at the NASA Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, graduating with distinction — among the first Bulgarians to do so. He was running a company the entire time. The learning was not ornamental — it was functional, same instinct that had him reading constantly as a teenager and working three jobs as a student. The method has not changed. The stakes have.

Chasing the Next Peak Before the Last One Cools

Maxim Behar’s advice does not come with conditions. Never give up. Follow your dreams, your aims, your desires — every day, every minute. Sooner or later, you reach them.

And when you do, do not look down at the road you came from. Look up. The next peak is already there. That is how he has operated for thirty years, and there is no indication he plans to stop.