Speakers bios

Ali Al-Jaberi is a professional moderator and studio presenter at ProModeration with strong expertise in European affairs. He is a former Europe correspondent for Associated Press TV News, a multiple award-winning public speaker and a former lecturer in public policy at The Hague University. In addition, Ali is a PR consultant and an executive communication and media coach. See www.promoderation.nl

Federica Bellato is a Politics and Policy Analysis (MSc) student at Bocconi University. She has previous experience working at the European Commission on sanctions and is currently writing her thesis on youth representation in Alpine areas.

Cosmin Boiangiu is the Executive Director of the European Labour Authority. A career diplomat since 1996, Mr Boiangiu has expertise in EU affairs and multilateral diplomacy, security and strategic policies, development, NATO and the United Nations. He has represented Romania at the UN Security Council and NATO and has worked as Spokesperson and Director for Information and Press at the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2012 to 2016, he was Romanian Ambassador to Slovenia and then went on to serve as Romania's Deputy Permanent Representative to the EU and Representative to COREPER I, which he chaired during Romania's presidency of the Council of the EU in 2019. He has a degree in International Economic Relations, a Master's degree in Public Management and a PhD in the Economics of climate change.

Martine Clerckx is the founder of Wide - The Societal Strategic Institute and has been its Associate Director since 1999. Her research focuses on detecting social trends, forecasting future scenarios and identifying the key factors that shape the changing behaviours of Europeans. Her extensive expertise spans various domains, including institutions, civic engagement and sectors such as health, technology and mobility. In addition to conducting her research work, she has served as a professor of strategic planning at Brussels' Ihecs and pursued advanced studies in 'Building sustainable agreements' at Harvard Kennedy School and foresight techniques with Futuribles International.

Benedetta Coraglia has a Double Degree in Politics and Policy Analysis (MSc), with a focus on energy and environmental policy, from Bocconi University and Sciences Po. She is currently working at the OECD on environmental policies and climate action.

Ivana Dragičević is editor-at-large at N1 Television, an exclusive CNN affiliate for the Adria-Balkan region, where she was previously executive producer of news programmes and executive editor of international news. She began her career at Croatian public TV broadcaster HRT where she held several positions, including foreign affairs correspondent and chief correspondent in Belgrade. A multiple award-winning reporter, her work has focused on European and international affairs for more than twenty-five years. She has received three annual awards as best TV journalist from the Croatian Journalists' Association (1999, 2001, 2013) and an award from HRT for best TV reporting (2010). She has interviewed a number of global public figures, from Bashar al-Assad to Jens Stoltenberg, from Amin Maalouf to Bob Geldof.

Carolina Guerra is a Politics and Policy Analysis (MSc) graduate of Bocconi University. She works at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), where she focuses on development co-operation in support of poverty and inequality reduction. She has previous experience working at the European Commission on sanctions.

Dominika Hajdu serves as policy director at the Centre for Democracy & Resilience at GLOBSEC, a European policy think tank. Throughout her tenure at GLOBSEC she has spearheaded a series of international projects and initiatives centred on research, awareness-raising and capacity-building, aiming to fortify societal and state resilience against attempts to weaken democracy and transatlantic unity. In her research, Dominika delves into the effects of emerging technological and geopolitical trends on democratic societies, emphasising cognitive security and strategic communication. She earned her MA in EU Foreign Policy from the University of Leuven in Belgium.

Miroslav Hajnoš is a professional trade union expert with experience spanning a decade. As a specialist in European and International Relations at the Slovak Confederation of Trade Unions, he plays a pivotal role in shaping European initiatives. Since 2019, he has also served as a specialist in digitisation and marketing, focusing on AI, Big Data, digital transformation and IT technology. Miroslav is also active in EU bodies. He has been a member of the European Economic and Social Committee since 2020 and has worked with the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (EUROFOUND) since 2016. He is also a deputy member of the executive committee of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC).

Violeta Jelić is a Member of the European Economic Social Committee since 2013. Since 2015 until today she serves as the EESC Employers' Group Vice-President and in 2023 she was appointed President of the EESC´s Ad hoc Group on the European Citizens´ Initiative.

In the Croatian Chamber of Trades and Crafts, which represents the interests of small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, she is for 14 years. For the last 11 years she in the position of advisor for International cooperation and EU, and also in position of general Secretary of the Croatian Chamber of Trades and Crafts.

From 2000 to 2009, she gained experience working with international humanitarian organizations, associations and civil society. Also, she is a professor of sociology and actively participates in several local associations with a focus on social issues.

Alexander Kleinig is the EESC's Director for Communication and Interinstitutional Relations. Mr Kleinig is Austrian and previously worked at the European Parliament, first in legislative work and then in communication. In 2005, he was appointed project manager to set up a European Parliament Visitors' Centre in Brussels, which has grown to be the largest parliamentary Visitors' Centre in Europe, attracting 350 000 visitors per year and winning 16 different design and communication awards. He then became Head of the Concept and Design unit, where he developed several Europe-wide communication campaigns, including part of the 2019 European election campaign ("thistimeImvoting"). Mr Kleinig joined the EESC in 2022 and has a master's degree in economics from the University of Vienna.

Nika Kovač is the founding director of the 8th of March Research Institute, a movement-building organisation that uses storytelling and advocacy to confront gender and economic inequalities across Slovenia. The Institute works to break the silence around sexual violence by gathering testimonials and data on rape, abortion, and sexual assault across the country. Under her leadership, their advocacy campaigns successfully initiated the legal redefinition of rape in Slovenia, enforcing a new legal precedent for the "yes means yes" consent model. A member of the 2020 class of the Obama Foundation Leaders program in Europe, and of the Foundation's 2021-2022 Scholars Program at Columbia University, Nika is also the author of three books, My Choice: Testimonies, Rights and Prejudices Regarding Abortion, Brave Girls and #metoo The Storm That Shook the World.

Karin Kőváry Sólymos is a Slovak journalist who has worked for the Investigative centre of Ján Kuciak (ICJK) since 2022. Karin's work primarily focuses on disinformation, Russian propaganda, information operations, and OSINT investigations. Together with her colleagues, she won the 2022 Investigative Press Prize for a series of texts about the disinformation website NewsFront. Before joining ICJK, she worked as an editor and presenter for the Slovak national broadcaster RTVS (Radio Patria). During her university years, she was a senior analyst for the only fact-checking portal in Slovakia. Karin holds a Security Studies and Political Science degree from Masaryk University, Brno.

Rasťo Kužel is a media and election expert with over 25 years of international experience who runs MEMO 98, a media monitoring organisation with extensive experience in delivering analyses and technical assistance to different electoral stakeholders. Rasťo has worked as an analyst, consultant and trainer, participating in many election observation missions and projects. Rasťo has also focused on disinformation in the context of elections and on the role of social media during elections. He co-authored Elections in Digital Times, published by UNESCO, a practical guide focusing on the Internet, social media and AI.

Katrīna Leitāne is a member of the EESC's Civil Society Organisations' Group and the president of the EESC Youth Group, with more than 10 years of experience in the field of youth. She has developed several Erasmus+ projects promoting youth engagement at local and national level. She was also a national expert in the European Commission's expert group on EU indicators in the field of youth and a member of the National Working Group for the EU Youth Dialogue at the Latvian Ministry of Education and Science. An alumni of the Committee of the Regions' 2020 Young Elected Politicians programme and a member of Latvia's National Youth Council, Ms Leitāne is working towards fostering meaningful and structured youth engagement in the EESC with the ultimate goal of improving youth participation in the EU.

Tomáš Madleňák has been a reporter for the Investigative Center of Ján Kuciak since 2020. He covered the Ján Kuciak murder trials, worked on the Kočner's Library project and was part of the 2020 Journalism Award-winning team of investigative reporters for the series on the financial schemes, shell companies and hidden properties of the oligarch Norbert Bödör. He now focuses on international crime, money laundering and corruption cases in an attempt to continue the legacy of the murdered Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak.

Andrej Matišák is a journalist and deputy head of the foreign desk at the Slovak daily newspaper Pravda. Between 2015 and 2016 he was editor of the Defence Matters project, an online discussion platform concerning defence topics and joint initiative between four media outlets from four EU countries. Previously he had worked as head of the foreign desk at 24 hodín, and as editor of the foreign desk at Národná obroda. He focuses on global security, terrorism, US politics and foreign policy, China, NATO and the EU. He has reported from Afghanistan, Kosovo, Ethiopia, Ukraine, China, South Sudan, Myanmar, Mozambique and other countries.

Grigorij Mesežnikov is a political scientist and the co-founder and incumbent president of the Institute for Public Affairs, an independent Slovak think-tank. He has worked at Comenius University and the Political Science Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. He has edited and authored several books and published numerous studies, both in Slovakia and abroad, on the development of party systems and the transformation of post-communist societies, and on illiberal and authoritarian tendencies, populism, nationalism and hybrid threats. In 2006, he was awarded the Reagan-Fascell Fellowship by the US National Endowment for Democracy. In 2012, he was a research fellow at the Department of Political Science of Taiwan National University and in 2019-2020 a Europe's Futures fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna.

Eva Mihočková is editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy, a media site specialising in European and global affairs run by the Slovak Foreign Policy Association. Eva started her journalistic career in 1998 at Slovak Television. Since then, she has worked for major news organisations such as TA3, RTVS, Euractiv.sk, Plus7dní and Trend, where she served as a reporter, moderator and a member of the editorial office management team. Her analyses and interviews consistently reflect her dedication to addressing critical issues. Eva's commitment to strengthening the rule of law and democracy in Slovakia has also led her to work as an investigative journalist for the Stop the Corruption Foundation. She was awarded the 2022 Journalism Award by the Open Society Foundation.

Małgorzata Molęda-Zdziech is a sociologist and political scientist. She is head of the Department of Political Studies at SGH Warsaw School of Economics and is the Rector's Representative for Cooperation with the European Union. Previously, she was Director of the Polish Science Contact Agency of the Polish Academy of Sciences Polsca in Brussels (2017-2020). Her research interests focus on political communication, the mediatisation of public life, lobbying and interest groups at national and European level. She supports the European Commission Representation in Poland as an EU expert member of the Team Europe Direct Poland network.

Márta Pardavi is co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a Budapest-based leading human rights NGO. A lawyer by training, she has recently been focusing on the threats to the rule of law and civil society space in Hungary and the EU. She also co-leads the Recharging Advocacy for Rights in Europe (RARE) programme. Márta serves on the boards of PILnet and the International Partnership for Human Rights. She was awarded the 2018 William D. Zabel Human Rights Award from Human Rights First and the 2019 Civil Rights Defender of the Year award and was chosen to be a member of POLITICO28 Class of 2019. In 2020-2021, she was a Policy Leader Fellow at the European University Institute’s School of Transnational Governance in Florence, Italy.

Corina Pirvulescu has over 12 years' experience working in youth programmes and on the electoral engagement of young voters in Romania and the US and at EU. Over the years she has had different roles, starting as a youth representative and continuing as a professional, advising public institutions and international organisations. She has co-authored various publications on youth (electoral) participation. Her main goal is to make elections accessible, meaningful and fun for young people. She is the co-founder of Civics International, a Brussels-based non-profit organisation to be launched by the 2024 European elections, aimed at connecting the experiences of young Europeans and Americans in elections. Corina holds a Master's Degree in Public Administration from the Hertie School in Berlin.

Nick Robins-Early is a New York-based investigative journalist whose coverage focuses on politics, technology and disinformation. His work as a reporter and editor has appeared in numerous publications, including The Guardian, The Huffington Post, Vice News and Business Insider. He has received multiple accolades for his reporting, including the 2023 European Press Prize as part of an international investigation that exposed a global extremist network. In addition to journalism, he has an academic background in the study of international relations and non-state terror groups.

Oliver Röpke was elected President of the EESC in April 2023. Member of the EESC since 2009, Mr Röpke was president of the EESC's Workers' Group, member of the EESC Bureau, and rapporteur of many EESC resolutions and opinions on employment and social policy, the single market and innovation. Mr Röpke headed the Brussels office of the Austrian Trade Union Federation (ÖGB) and took on several senior positions, including representative of ÖGB to the EU institutions and to the executive committee of the ETUC, and advisory member of the ÖGB federal executive board. Mr Röpke has a legal background and holds a law degree from the University of Vienna.

Philipp Schulmeister is Director for Campaigns in the European Parliament's Directorate-General for Communication. Austrian by nationality, lawyer by education and communicator by passion, he has worked in the European Parliament for over 20 years, most recently as head of Public Opinion Monitoring (2017-2022). Leading a team of six units, he is responsible for institutional communication directed at citizens, developing, coordinating and implementing strategies and campaigns designed to inform them, create a positive attitude and trust vis-a-vis the European Parliament, and engage the public in multiple ways, the most important being voting in the European elections.

Allegra Semenzato has a Double Degree in Politics and Policy Analysis (MSc), with a focus on European affairs, energy and environmental policy, from Bocconi University and Sciences Po. She is currently working at the OECD on a multidisciplinary project.

Robert Sermek is head of the European Parliament Liaison Office in Slovakia. Leading a team of seven, he is responsible for implementing Parliament's communication strategies at national level and for bringing the work of Parliament and its members closer to Slovak citizens. He has been working in the European Parliament since 2007. He was project leader for audiovisual products in the EU-wide communication campaigns before the 2014 and 2019 European elections, and editorial coordinator for Parliament's audiovisual services. Before joining the EU administration, he worked as a journalist and was a correspondent for the Slovak News Agency TASR and later for Slovak Radio in Brussels, covering a crucial period of Slovakia's accession talks with the EU and NATO.

Alice Stollmeyer is the Founder & Executive Director of Defend Democracy, a nonpartisan, transatlantic NGO defending democracy from foreign, domestic and technological threats. Alice has a background in social studies of science, technology and society. A former energy policy adviser and digital strategist, she now works on democracy, technology, geopolitics and hybrid threats. She is in the list of Politico's #Power40 top influencers who are most effective in setting the agenda in politics, public policy and advocacy in Brussels.

Vladimir Šucha has been head of the European Commission Representation in Slovakia since 2022. Before that, he was a senior policy adviser at UNESCO, seconded from the European Commission. He has held leading positions at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre and before that was Director for culture and media in the European Commission's Directorate-General for Education and Culture. Prior to joining the European Commission, he worked as Director of the Slovak Research and Development Agency (2005-2006) and as counsellor for research, education and culture at the Slovak Representation to the EU in Brussels (2000-2004). In parallel, he has had an academic and research career in Slovakia and many other countries. He has published over 100 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Laura Sullivan is a feminist activist and former executive director of WeMove Europe, a one-million member digital campaigning organisation focused on transforming the EU through people power. She has spent 22 years in Brussels campaigning for social and environmental justice, with shorter stints living and building bridges with campaigners in Senegal, Brazil and Peru. A former MEP assistant, Laura later spent ten years with ActionAid International as a campaign manager and as Regional Director for Europe and the Americas. During that time, she was Vice President of the Board of Concord, Europe's main global social justice network. She has an MA in Governance and Development specialising in civil society participation.

Monika Uhlerová is the President of the Confederation of Trade Unions of the Slovak Republic (KOZ SR) and a member of the Steering Committee of both the European and the International Trade Union Confederations (ETUC and ITUC). Previously, she was assistant professor at the Department of Political Science at Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, where her work focused on social dialogue and policy, the trade union movement and the labour market. A committed trade unionist since 1999, Monika chaired KOZ SR's Youth Council and served as its vice-president from 2016 to 2022, when she took over its presidency. She has also been vice-president of Slovakia's Economic and Social Council since 2016 and will be at its helm as of 2024.

Giovanni Zagni, PhD, is a journalist based in Milan, Italy and director of the fact-checking projects Pagella Politica and Facta.news. He is a member of the executive board of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), where he serves as the Chair of its Task Force on the 2024 European Parliament Elections. Giovanni is a member of the MSI-INF Committee of Experts on the Integrity of Online Information, established in 2022 by the Council of Europe, and took part as an expert in the Monitoring Unit on Disinformation around COVID-19 established by the Italian government in 2020.