Victoria Zdrok

• Victoria

Dr. Victoria Nika Zdrok (born March 3, 1973 in Kiev, Soviet Union) is a Playboy Playmate, Penthouse Pet of the Year, a star of elaborate adult videos, an attorney, a clinical psychologist, sex therapist and former goodwill ambassador.

As a child in the former Soviet Union, Victoria listened to Voice of America on her father's clandestine radio and diligently studied English with the hope of one day coming to America. In 1989, at the age of 16, she was honored as the first Soviet teenager allowed to come to the U.S. as a foreign exchange student. She arrived on an academic scholarship, as she describes it, as "a sort of ambassador of goodwill and perestroika and glasnost."

Zdrok graduated from Pensacola Junior College in Florida at age 17 and West Chester University in Pennsylvania at age 18 with a B.A., Summa Cum Laude. She entered graduate school where she studied for a joint law and psychology program at Villanova University and Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received her J.D. degree at the Law School and a subsequent M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology. Her dissertation on "The Effect of Judicial Instructions on Jury Perception of Defendants' Refusal to Testify" was recommended for the Law Psychology Awards. She aimed to specialize in the "area where law and psychology intersect" and originally intended to become a jury consultant. She passed the bar exam on her first try. She later completed a post-doctoral qualification in sex therapy at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

She was crowned Philadelphia's "Best Beauty" in August 1994. She has appeared in videos, movies, talk shows and magazines. She became October 1994's Playboy Playmate of the Month. In an interview, Zdrok claimed she would have been selected Playmate of the Year over Julie Lynn Cialini except for false rumors Zdrok said were circulated about her.

She posed for Penthouse in June 2002 as their Pet of the Month, as the "the unabashed, in-your-face sexuality that Penthouse has" appealed to her more than Playboy did.In 2004, at the age of 30, she was named Penthouse Pet of the Year. She is the second woman, after Linn Thomas, to be both a Playboy Playmate and a Penthouse Pet.

At one point, she dated Prince Albert II of Monaco.

Confessions of Centerfolds and Those Who Love Them, about the centerfold industry, and a book on the psychology of sexual fantasy.