Speakers

Connor Allen is a Brussels-based European government affairs professional specialising in EU industrial and trade policy. He works on European policy and regulatory affairs for a major global Japanese corporation, with a particular focus on industrial competitiveness, free trade and deregulation.

Prior to this, he worked in the European Parliament, advising Members of the European Parliament on EU policy and political affairs. His work has focused extensively on the impact of regulation on industrial competitiveness, investment and global supply chains, and he is a frequent advocate for open markets and growth-oriented economic policy in Europe.

Alongside his professional activities, he writes on Japan-Europe political and economic relations, with a focus on industrial strategy, geopolitics and open markets. He is also the founder of Iwakura Magazine, an independent publication focused on Europe-Japan industrial, economic and geopolitical affairs.

Andrzej Bobiński is the managing director and chairman of Polityka Insight. Previously, he was deputy managing director, responsible for Polityka Insight’s business operations. Between 2013 and 2016, he headed PI’s economics department. Until 2012, he was Head of External Relations at Orange Polska, whilst also co-founding the Wrocław Global Forum as director of the event’s secretariat. Between 2006 and 2009, he was programme coordinator at the Centre for International Relations. He hosts the political podcast Nasłuch, as well as other Polityka Insight podcasts. He also appears on the podcast Dzieje się. He is on the board of the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) and the Board of Trustees of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).

Javier Arguedas is a Costa Rican journalist, moderator, and media trainer. He is a news anchor and talk show host at Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle (DW), in both English and Spanish. He has worked as DW’s Latin America correspondent, based in Bogotá, Colombia, and as a financial correspondent at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. He currently lives and works in Berlin.

Séamus Boland was elected President of the European Economic and Social Committee in October 2025. 

He has been an EESC Member since 2011. He has held different roles at the Committee, including President of the Civil Society Organizations' Group (2020-2025) and Vice President of the Civil Society Organisations' Group (2018-2020). 

His policy and political interests include the eradication of poverty, social exclusion, rural development and inequality. Séamus has been CEO of Irish Rural Link since 2001, Chair of the Peatlands Council since 2012 and a Board Member of Inland Fisheries Ireland (2018-2022). 

In October 2024 he was appointed to the Just Transition Commission as an independent expert by the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications in Ireland. 

President Boland is a farmer and has worked in civil society for over 40 years, including with young people, ethnic minorities, people with disabilities and people living in rural isolation. He is a trained Speech and Drama Educator.

Zsófia Fülöp is a Hungarian journalist at Lakmusz, Hungary’s only independent fact-checking site. Prior to that, she worked for a political-cultural weekly newspaper for nine years, where she mainly wrote about social issues and under-represented communities.

In 2022, Zsófia was awarded a fellowship at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in Oxford. She is currently a member of the 2025 cohort of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network’s (BIRN) Fellowship for Journalistic Excellence programme. 

David Grunewald is the founder of Pluginto.ai and a recognised AI expert with over 28 years of experience in digital strategy and business leadership. Certified by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management in Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Business Strategy (2023), he specialises in AI transformation through training, strategic consultancy and organisational audits, with a focus on prompt engineering, AI agent creation, and automated workflows. 

Over the past three years, he has trained more than 2 500 professionals across Europe, Africa and Asia, working with organisations such as Proximus, Havas Paris and the Belgian Development Cooperation. He also teaches Digital Strategy at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

Marija Hanževački has served as EESC Vice-President for Communication since October 2025. She has been a member of the EESC Communication Commission since 2019 and of the EESC Bureau since 2023.

She joined the EESC in 2013 as part of Croatia’s first delegation following the country’s accession to the European Union. Prior to this, in 2007, she became a member of the EU-Croatia Joint Consultative Committee, paving the way for Croatia’s civil society to play an active role in shaping EU policies.

Ms Hanževački began her career in the trade union movement and has since represented Croatian and European workers at both national and international levels.

She is currently General Secretary of the Independent Trade Unions of Croatia. She previously held the same post at the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Croatia.

Her international roles include Vice-President of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), member of the ITUC General Council and Executive Bureau and a member of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) Executive Committee. She is also on the Management Board of Eurofound.

Alexandra Karppi joined the Department of Political Economy in October 2025. Her research focuses on democracy and civil society in the Western Balkans, exploring how governments use loyal and semi-loyal non-state actors to legitimise their rule, and how these actors adapt their mobilisation strategies in response.

Before starting her PhD, Alexandra led research on the Western Balkans at a Brussels-based independent media watchdog and was co-author of Freedom House’s annual report on democratic governance in Europe and Eurasia, Nations in Transit. Prior to this, she worked in democracy development in Washington, D.C.

Alexandra holds an MA in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Columbia University’s Harriman Institute and a BA in Political Science and Slavic Studies from Columbia College.

Liora Kern is a Brussels-based strategic communications expert with 25+ years of experience, focusing on narrative and visibility. She has worked across Europe and the USA. She led the digital communication for Jean-Claude Juncker’s presidential campaign and has directed award-winning communication programmes for associations, political groups and Fortune 500 companies. 

As founder and CEO of The Think Room, she advises a wide variety of clients on narrative, positioning and strategy using her unique DNA Key approach. Liora specialises in LinkedIn and AI visibility and gives many workshops on the subject.

Dr Philipp Lausberg is a Senior Policy Analyst in the European Political Economy Programme at the European Policy Centre, working primarily on EU competitiveness, the single market, industrial policy, strategic investments and sanctions. He has taught International Political Economy at the Université Catholique de Lille and at the University of Antwerp. 

Before joining the EPC, he was a Marie Curie fellow at the University of Antwerp and the Hertie School in Berlin, completing a doctoral thesis on the subject of EU reforms in response to the sovereign debt crisis, such as European Banking Union and reforms in European fiscal policy. Prior to that, he worked at the strategy consultancy firm Roland Berger and in e-commerce and fintech ventures at the start-up incubator Rocket Internet in Moscow and Berlin.

Cillian Lohan graduated from University College Cork and the University of Ulster with Bachelor and Master of Science Degrees. 

He has worked extensively in the corporate sector (strategic planning and business development) and in the environmental sector (conservation and habitat management).

He is a leader in the field of the Circular Economy. He was the inaugural Chair of the European Circular Economy Stakeholder Platform which he helped to establish. He is an experienced delegate at United Nations initiatives such as the Climate COP negotiations, and the High Level Political Forum on the Sustainable Development Goals. 

As CEO of Green Economy Foundation, Cillian has overseen ambitious projects including the planting of over 4 million trees in Ireland, and the establishment of a Wildlife Reserve in Tobago. 

Appointed through the Irish Environmental Pillar, he has been an active member of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) since 2015, and has been rapporteur for 17 opinions. He was EESC vice-president in charge of communication from 2020 to 2023. In October 2025, he was elected to the office of president of the EESC Civil Society Organisations' Group.

Antoinette Nikolova is the Director of the Balkan Free Media Initiative (BFMI), an independent Brussels-based organisation focused on media freedom and the structural vulnerabilities that shape the information environment in southeast Europe.

An accomplished journalist with extensive international experience, she has worked with major media organisations including Deutsche Welle, Euractiv, Sky, The Economist/Life, News Corp’s bTV, and Nova Broadcasting Group, covering international events, European affairs, political crises and the role of media in shaping public debate.

She previously served on the Board of the Foreign Press Association in Italy and was a lecturer at the Centro Studi Americani and the Università Lateranense.

Sandra Parthie is President of the Employers’ Group of the European Economic and Social Committee since October 2025. She joined the EESC in 2020, and was active, among other things, in the section on the Single Market (INT). 

Ms Parthie heads the Brussels Office of the German Economic Institute since March 2015, presenting economic research by the Institute to stakeholders in Brussels, often in cooperation with industry associations. 

Before her current role, she was Director for EU Regulatory Affairs at French multinational company Alstom S.A. with a focus on renewable energies and grid technology. Prior to that, she was the political advisor and head of office of a German Member of the European Parliament, working on environmental and climate policy. 

Sandra Parthie holds an MA in Political Science, with a minor in economics from the Freie Universität Berlin. She also conducted part of her studies at the Université de Montréal in Canada.

Sebastian Rodriguez is a campaign strategist focused on narrative change and the application of artificial intelligence in advocacy. At European Movement International, he develops campaigns designed to influence how Europe is understood and discussed. He also founded the European Campaign Playbook, a community bringing together communication professionals to exchange tools, tactics and ideas for more effective campaigns.

Zornitsa Roussinova is President of the Economic and Social Council of the Republic of Bulgaria. Between 2012 and 2020, she served in three governments as Deputy Minister for Labour and Social Policy, and from 2016 to 2017 as Minister for Labour and Social Policy. She was responsible for labour market policies, social inclusion, labour law, European affairs and international cooperation, and for managing European funds. 

She has held management positions in the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy and the Ministry of Public Administration and Administrative Reform. She has successfully led international projects under the United States Agency for International Development, the United Nations Development Programme and the Bulgarian-Swiss Cooperation Programme. 

Zornitsa Roussinova holds a Master’s degree in International Economic Relations from the University of National and World Economy, and a Master’s degree in English and Bulgarian Linguistics from St. Kliment Ohridsk University.

Jochen Spangenberg is a media and communication expert working as Deputy Head of Research and Cooperation Projects at Deutsche Welle. The topical focus of his work over the past decade has been on research dealing with social news-gathering, disinformation analysis and verification of digital content, and relating all this to the news sector and journalists. 

Jochen also lectures at the Free University Berlin in Media & Communication Studies, is an active supporter of Lie Detectors, an NGO that brings media literacy into classrooms, and serves as vice-chair of the Advisory Council of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), Europe’s primary initiative against disinformation. He is also Chair of the Advisory Board of CEDMO (the Central European Digital Media Observatory) and a member of the Advisory Board of GADMO (the German-Austrian Digital Media Observatory).

Slavina Spasova is Member of the Network Core Team of the European Social Policy Analysis Network (ESPAN) and Research Associate at CEVIPOL (Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).
 

She is also the former Director of the European Social Observatory (OSE). She holds a PhD in Political Science from ULB. Her research covers pension reforms, protection for the self-employed, work–life balance, healthcare, long-term care, sickness benefits, and, more recently, the European Union’s demographic discourse and policy responses. 

She is a Member of the Strategic Council of the Institut d’études européennes (IEE), ULB since 2024, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of European Social Security.

Teodor Stoychev has been Head of the European Parliament Liaison Office in Bulgaria since March 2016. He graduated from the 9th French High School in Sofia, holds a BA degree in History from Sofia University and a MA in History of International Relations and European Integration from the Robert Schuman University in Strasbourg. His previous experience includes working as editor and editor-in-chief of various publications, and since 2008 he has been the press officer for the European Parliament in Brussels and then in Sofia.

Lucie Studničná is the president of the EESC Workers' Group since 2023, having been group vice president since 2020 and member of the EESC since 2010. She has broad experience in European politics and international relations from a trade union perspective, having served as the International Secretary of ČMKOS for the last 9 years. 

Before that, she was the International Secretary of OS KOVO from 1999 to 2014 and the head of the international department of the same trade union from 1992 to 1996. She studied International Relations at the School of Economics in Prague and, in addition to Czech, speaks fluent English, German and Russian.