Tomáš Sedláček was clearing out his office at the Finance Ministry this past April after more than two years as an adviser to the government when he got an e-mail that made him run out of the room and hug his assistant.

The 29-year-old macroeconomist hadn't received the secret algorithm to solving the stock market. Yale University had just written to say he was the first Czech to become a Yale World Fellow, one of its most prestigious honors.

"It was really, really exciting," said Sedláček, who wears his long, wavy red hair in a ponytail and speaks in unaccented English.

On Aug. 16, Sedláček, now chief macroeconomic strategist at ČSOB, will leave for New Haven, Connecticut, where he will join 17 other fellows and spend four months studying and meeting with world leaders. He was selected from a pool of 1,200 candidates and will be joined by the deputy CEO of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the finance minister of Costa Rica and the managing partner of Vietnam's leading law firm, among others.

The program is designed to create a global network of international leaders. Candidates can either be nominated or apply directly, and they have to submit a written application, three letters of reference and do phone interviews.

Like all the other fellows, Sedláček was selected because he has done so many impressive things in his career at such a young age.

"In a nutshell, these people are really fast-trackers," said Aleta Wenger, outreach coordinator for the Yale World Fellows program. "They're movers and shakers. These people are not sitting around."

'The home run'

Indeed, Sedláček started out with a job most economists would be lucky to get at the end of a long, esteemed career.

In 2001, while still a student at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in Prague, Sedláček got a call from the dean.

"Fischer wants someone at the office," he said.

Thinking he meant Václav Fischer, the former owner of the Fischer travel agency, Sedláček was reluctant.

"I misunderstood, and I almost turned it down in the beginning," he said.

But it wasn't Václav Fischer. It was Pavel Fischer, chief policy adviser to President Václav Havel, and he was looking for an economist. The two men met 20 minutes later, and Sedláček got the job.

"It was the home run," Sedláček said. "If you do that at the beginning of your career, it's like: What's next? It was a wonderful jump-start."

Sedláček spent a little less than two years with the president's office before taking a position as an adviser at the Finance Ministry. There he worked on tax reform and budget deficit reduction.

Like many of the other young experts who took positions with the government in the past two years, he decided to leave before June's general election, largely because he felt he'd done all he could and didn't want to have anything to do with electoral politics.

"There was no need for us anymore," he said. "Being there now, I would have to walk in the sewers."

After five years in the public sector, Sedláček thought it was time for a change, so he accepted a position with ČSOB, where he's been since May. At night, Sedláček teaches courses in economics, business ethics and current affairs at Charles University and the University of New York in Prague.

First time's a charm

Sedláček, whose favorite book is the Bible, had never applied for any kind of fellowship or award before being selected as a 2006 Yale World Fellow. He was nominated by Hana Ripková, executive director of the J. William Fulbright Commission for Educational Exchange in the Czech Republic.

For Sedláček, who returned here at 20 after five years in Denmark, the opportunity to go to Yale also means a much-needed break from his work here. "I've been here for eight years almost nonstop, and I needed a little break from what I was doing."

It's also a chance to learn more about the U.S. economy — its education, pension and tax systems in particular — and work with emerging leaders from all over the world.

He will travel to Connecticut with his wife, Markéta Sedláčková, a scientist and sociologist at the Czech Academy of Sciences who he married in 2000.

During his four months there, he will continue writing and publishing articles. While he'll have to take a break from teaching, he's hoping his experience in the United States will end up rubbing off on his students here.