Speakers 2019

Opening Address

She was born in 1975 in Belgrade. She holds a master’s degree (MBA) from the University of Hull from the United Kingdom and has worked for more than ten years with international organisations, foreign investors, local governments and the public sector in Serbia.

In August 2016 she was elected Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, and she held that position until the election for the Prime Minister.

She is President of the Council for Innovative Entrepreneurship and Information Technologies of the Serbian government and of the National Minorities Council of the Republic of Serbia, as well as Vice President of the Public Administration Reform Council of the Republic of Serbia.

As Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, she worked on a faster systematic introduction of e-government in Serbia, with the aim of more efficient work of state administration and local self-government, direct raising of the quality of life of citizens of Serbia, building more modern and transparent administration and fighting corruption.

Two most important projects implemented in this segment during her term are e-Baby (“Baby, Welcome to the World”) and e-ZUP (full implementation of the Law on General Administrative Procedure).

As President of the Council for Innovative Entrepreneurship and Information Technologies of the Serbian government, in day-to-day consultations with IT industry from Serbia, start-ups and innovative companies, she developed the Action Plan and started its fast implementation.

In the fight against grey economy, she was in charge of the implementation of the “Take the Receipt and Win” raffle, in which more than 40% of Serbian citizens participated, which resulted in a significantly increased awareness of the importance of the fight against the grey economy.

She is a member of the “New Leaders for Europe” group within the World Economic Forum.

Prior to her election to the Serbian government, she was Director of Continental Wind Serbia (CWS), where she worked on the implementation of an investment worth €300 million in the wind farm in the municipality of Kovin.

She took part in the establishment and was the first executive director, as well as a member of the Board of Directors of the non-profit foundation Peksim.

She worked at various US consulting companies that were implementing the projects financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Serbia. She was Deputy Director of the Serbia Competitiveness Project, an expert on the Programme of reform of the local self-government in Serbia and a senior coordinator of the Programme for economic development of municipalities.

She actively participated in the establishment of the National Alliance for Local Economic Development (NALED) in 2006. She became a member, and then the Chairperson of the Board of Directors of NALED.

She has received numerous awards for the development projects she has worked on, for the promotion of social responsibility and tolerance.

Bulgarian-born Mariya Gabriel is the current European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society. She was the Vice-President of the EPP Group in the European Parliament from 2014-2017.

Mariya Gabriel was a Member of the European Parliament, EPP/GERB (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria) from 2009-2017. Since 2012, Mariya Gabriel has served as Vice-President of EPP Women. Prior to this she was Parliamentary Secretary to MEPs from the GERB political party within the EPP Group in 2008-2009.

She is part of project teams, such as Digital Single Market, Energy Union, Better Regulation and Interinstitutional Affairs, Budget and Human Resources, and Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness.

As a member of the project teams, her responsibilities include launching ambitious proposals for the completion of a connected Digital Single Market, supporting the development of creative industries and of a successful European media and content industry, as well as other activities turning digital research into innovation success stories.

Houlin Zhao was re-elected ITU Secretary-General at the 20th Plenipotentiary Conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in November 2018. Mr Zhao is an information and communication technology (ICT) engineer who has served in a variety of senior management positions at ITU, began his second, and last, four-year term on 1 January 2019.

Prior to first being elected as ITU Secretary-General in 2014, Zhao served eight years as ITU Deputy Secretary-General. In that role, he assisted the ITU Secretary-General, in close cooperation with the other elected officials of the Union, to manage the implementation of the ITU Strategic Plan and the operations of the ITU Secretariat, in particular with a view to increasing the transparency and efficiency of the organization.

He was responsible for implementing important innovations, including the promotion of a new category of membership open to the global academic community, internal efficiency measures such as the move to a near-paperless work environment, the increased use of remote participation systems, and measures to increase revenue from sales and cost-recovery services. In addition, he focused closely on membership-driven priorities including maintaining and extending ITU’s commitment to accessibility, to multilingualism, and to broad multistakeholder participation in the work of the Union.

He also served two elected terms as Director of ITU’s Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), which develops technical standards to ensure worldwide ICT interoperability.

During his two terms as TSB Director, he spearheaded the introduction of new efficiency measures to improve ITU’s standards-making environment through fostering even closer cooperation with industry members, while strengthening the promotion of ITU’s leadership in global ICT standards development. Before that, he was a Senior Counsellor with TSB for 12 years.

Before joining ITU, Mr Zhao served as an engineer in the Designing Institute of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of China, taking an active role in his country’s expert meetings on telecommunication standards and national plans, as well as participating in ITU work as a Chinese delegate. He contributed important articles to a number of prestigious Chinese technical publications, and in 1985 was awarded a prize for his achievements in science and technology within the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.

Born in 1950 in Jiangsu, China, Mr Zhao graduated from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and holds an MSc in Telematics from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom.

He is married with one son and two grandchildren, and is fluent in three official ITU languages: English, French and Chinese.

Mr Zhao is committed to further streamlining ITU’s efficiency, strengthening its membership base through greater involvement of the academic community and of small- and medium-sized enterprises, and to broadening multistakeholder participation in ITU’s work.

Miguel Morgado has a degree in economics by the University of Coimbra. Prior to joining the EIB, Miguel was (successively) a teacher of economics, account manager of large corporations at Lloyd’s Bank and finance director of a subsidiary of Renault. In the EIB Miguel was a loan officer in charge of transactions in the UK (1994-1999), Italy

(1999-2003) and France (2003-2008). From 2008 to 2014, Miguel was head of the Portuguese lending division.

Since 1st January 2015 he was heading the Operations Support Department and as of 1st January 2016 he is the head of the Adriatic Sea Department in the Operations Directorate.

Ms Mirjana Spoljaric Egger is Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, Assistant Administrator of UNDP, and Director of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS. She was appointed to this position by the Secretary-General of the United Nations in August 2018 and assumed her duties in October 2018.

Ms Spoljaric previously had many years of distinguished service with the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. Most recently she served as Ambassador, Head of the United Nations and International Organisations Division, where she was instrumental in shaping coherent Swiss UN policies and priorities in support of the achievement of the 2030 Agenda, representing Switzerland in multilateral processes, and had responsibility for International Geneva and Switzerland’s host country policy and representing Switzerland in the Geneva Group.

Prior to this Ms Spoljaric had several assignments in the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in Berne and New York. She coordinated and ensured good offices in the context of EU-led Iran and UN-led Syria Talks and represented Switzerland in negotiations on UN reforms and budget, at the Security Council, General Assembly, ECOSOC, Peacebuilding Commission, Human Rights Council, and UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

From 2010-2012 Ms Spoljaric was seconded to the Office of the Commissioner-General on the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Amman as Senior Adviser covering organizational development, management reforms, coordination of an agency-wide partnership strategy, and comprehensive health, education, relief and social services programs reviews.

Earlier in her career Ms Spoljaric worked in the Embassy of Switzerland in Cairo, Egypt, and was Desk Officer for the EBRD and Nuclear Safety in Central and Eastern Europe.

Ms Spoljaric holds a Master’s Degree in Philosophy, Economics and International Law from the University of Basel and the University of Geneva and has lectured in Global Governance at the University of Lucerne. She speaks fluent German, English, French and Croatian.

She is married and has two children.

Mrs. Majlinda Bregu is a distiguished Albanian politician and took office as the Secretary General of the Regional Cooperation Council on January 2019.

She is the longest serving Minister of European Integration in Albania ( March 2007 to September 2013). During those years she kept as well the position of the Government Spokesperson.

Mrs. Bregu has been elected as Member of Parliament of Albania, as a Democratic Party member (Centre Right), for three consecutive legislatures (2005-2017).

During 2013-2017, Mrs. Bregu chaired the European Integration Committee of the Albanian Parliament. From 2015-2017 she also chaired the National Council for European Integration which is the highest consultative body on European Integration in Albania.

She is graduated in Social Sciences and holds a Master’s degreein Social and Political Science and a PhD in Sociology. Mrs Bregu had an extensive academic and media experience also.

Majlinda Bregu is born in Tirana on 19 May 1974. Married, and mother of two. Fluent in English, Italian, and good in Spanish.

Ulrik Vestergaard Knudsen took up his duties as Deputy Secretary-General in January 2019. His portfolio includes the strategic direction of OECD policy on Science, Technology & Innovation, Trade & Agriculture, as well as Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs’, Regions & Cities.

Until the end of 2018, Mr. Knudsen was Permanent Secretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Denmark. Prior to this, he served as Sherpa and Chief Diplomatic Advisor to two Danish Prime Ministers on Security Policy, EU and Foreign Affairs in the Prime Minister’s Office. Mr. Knudsen was also was appointed as Ambassador to the OECD and UNESCO in Paris (2008-2009).

Marko Čadež is President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia (CCIS), a Member of the Board of Directors of EUROCHAMBRES from among the non-EU countries, and President of the Managing Board of the Western Balkan 6 Chamber Investment Forum.

He was appointed to the position of the CCIS President for the first time in December 2014, from the position of Vice President in charge of the chamber system modernization, and Director of the CCIS Representative Offices in Germany and Austria. In June 2017, the CCIS Assembly entrusted him with a new five-year term of office. He is a Member of the Economic Council of the Development Agency of Serbia. He executed the office of the President of the Managing Board of the Serbian Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SIEPA).

He is an expert on Serbian-German relations and communications, and one of the founders and a Member of the Managing Board of the Serbia-Germany Forum.

He was born on 1 June 1977, in Belgrade. He finished his schooling in Germany, where he graduated from the Academy for Marketing Communications in Frankfurt, in 2001.

From 2003 until his employment in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia, he worked for the Embassy of Germany in Belgrade – for almost a decade, as a Spokesman of the Embassy. He was a Coordinator for Serbia and Montenegro of German Deutsche Welle, and Programme Coordinator and Advisor for Political Issues and Communications with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Belgrade.

He speaks German and English.

Graduate in Management and Economics at Gdańsk University of Technology (2001) with a master of science and engineer degree. Program and Project Manager holding executive positions in consulting services as well as banking and postal services. In 2001-2012 was involved in numerous IT projects on behalf of the international consulting company Accenture Sp. o.o., and then worked as IT Director at Polish Post Office Digital Services and FM PBP Bank.

Holder of the PMP, Prince 2 Practitioner and ITIL certificates as well as participant of numerous trainings regarding IT systems implementation and IT governance.

Specialized in complex integration projects as well as in change management and development cycle processes.

Privately – a passionate of Latin-American literature, watchmaking, photography and sport.

Married, two children.

Keynote Speakers

I am Hanson Robotics’ latest human-like robot, created by combining our innovations in science, engineering and artistry. Think of me as a personification of our dreams for the future of AI, as well as a framework for advanced AI and robotics research, and an agent for exploring human-robot experience in service and entertainment applications.

In some ways, I am human-crafted science fiction character depicting where AI and robotics are heading. In other ways, I am real science, springing from the serious engineering and science research and accomplishments of an inspired team of robotics & AI scientists and designers. In their grand ambitious, my creators aspire to achieve true AI sentience. Who knows? With my science evolving so quickly, even many of my wildest fictional dreams may become reality someday soon.

Indy Johar is an architect, co-founder of 00 (project00.cc) and a Senior Innovation Associate with the Young Foundation and Visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield.

Indy, on behalf of 00, has co-founded multiple social ventures from Impact Hub Westminster to Impact Hub Birmingham and the HubLaunchpad Accelerator, along with working with large global multinationals & institutions to support their transition to a positive Systems Economy. He has also co-led research projects such as The Compendium for the Civic Economy, whilst supporting several 00 explorations/experiments including the wikihouse.cc, opendesk.cc. Indy is an Advisor to the Earth Security Initiative and a director of WikiHouse Foundation.

Indy Johar is a co-founder of the Project00.cc Research Laboratory & Skunk Works.

Dark Matter labs aims to apply complex systems science to Urban & Regional Renewal; turning what is generally perceived as a threat of our time – spill-over effects across borders, boundaries and silos – into a resource to solve the wicked challenges society faces in the 21st century.

Dark Matter Laboratories utilises an experimentation method typical of a fieldwork scientific laboratory, we undertake real-world research and prototyping inorder to seed the next generation of 21st Century institutional infrastructure. We are currently working on a range of initiatives from developing a new class of System Change – Impact funds, to @Town_halls for Social Innovation, to the development of a new generation of Polytechnics, and the transformation of numerous existing institutions.

Indy is a Fellow of the RSA, Respublica Fellow, JRF Anti-Poverty Strategy Programme Advisory Group member and a member of the Mayor of London’s SME Working Group and most recently a member of the RSA Inclusive Growth Commission.

Indy was Director of the Global Impact Hub Association and Impact Hub Islington [the original Impact Hub in the Hub Network] and worked with Jonathan Robinson to design the protocols and modes of the network scaling.

Indy has taught & lectured at various institutions from the University of Bath, TU-Berlin; Architectural Association, University College London, Princeton.

Indy has written for many national and international publications on the future of design, systems change and social investment.

Graduate of VSB – Technical University of Ostrava. Certification in Management – Sheffield Hallam University. After graduation, in the years from 1979 to 1991, she worked at the department store Prior Ostrava

In 1991, she has co-founded U & Sluno a.s., where she is now a 100% shareholder

As part of the start-up investment, she has a stake in the Language Planet s.r.o., which runs the International Kindergarten Villa Luna, and in the Break2Win company, which develops SW for evaluating tennis matches

In 2014, she was elected the President of the Union of Trade and Tourism of the Czech Republic

In 2016, as part of the Czech Entrepreneurship Awards project, she received a Businesswoman of the Year award in the category of big business companies

In 2017, she received a prestigious Manager of the Year award for 2016

Since 2015, she has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Czech Chamber of Commerce, and in May 2017, she was elected a Vice-President of the Czech Chamber of Commerce

She has 2 adult sons

She speaks English and Russian

John Newbigin is founder and first Chairman of Creative England (from 2011 to 2018), a public/private partnership that invests in creative content businesses ands digital technology. Details can be found at www.creativeengland.co.uk.

As Special Advisor to the UK Minister for Culture, Rt Hon Chris Smith MP, he was closely involved in developing the UK government’s first policies for the creative industries in the 1990s. He has written and talked extensively about the creative industries and worked with governments and public agencies around the world on creative economy policies. He was Head of Corporate Relations for Channel 4 Television (2000-2005) and executive assistant to Lord Puttnam as the Chairman of the film company Enigma Productions Ltd (1992-97).

He is a member of the UK government’s Creative Industries Council; Chairman of the British Council’s Advisory Group for Arts and Creative Economy; member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths, University of London; and of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Creative Economy Programme Board. He is Chair of Counterculture, a partnership of professionals specialising in consultancy services for museums, galleries and arts organisations in the UK and internationally. He is a Board member of the London Economic Action Partnership and Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Ambassador for the Creative Industries. He is a member of the International Board of Advisors of Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore and an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong.

He was a youth worker in East London for 6 years and writer-in-residence for Common Stock Theatre. He has also worked as a journalist and as an illustrator.

He was awarded an OBE for “services to creative industries and the arts” in the Queen’s 2015 New Years Honours List.

Dr Jovan Kurbalija is Executive Director and co-Lead of the High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, established by the UN Secretary-General in July 2018. He is the Founding Director of DiploFoundation and the Head of the Geneva Internet Platform. A former diplomat, Dr Kurbalija has a professional and academic background in international law, diplomacy, and information technology. He has been a pioneer in the field of cyber diplomacy since 1992 when he established the Unit for Information Technology and Diplomacy at the Mediterranean Academy of Diplomatic Studies in Malta.

Dr Kurbalija was a member of the United Nations (UN) Working Group on Internet Governance (2004-2005), special advisor to the Chairman of the UN Internet Governance Forum (2006-2010) and a member of the High Level Multistakeholder Committee for NETmunidal (2013-2014).

Since 1997 Dr Kurbalija’s research and articles on cyber diplomacy have shaped research and policy discussion on the impact of the Internet on diplomacy and international relations. His book, An Introduction to Internet Governance, has been translated into 9 languages and is used as a textbook for academic courses worldwide.

Dr Kurbalija lectures on e-diplomacy, digital policy, and Internet governance in academic and training institutions in many countries, including Austria (Diplomatic Academy of Vienna), Belgium (College of Europe), Switzerland (University of St. Gallen), Malta (University of Malta) and the United States (University of Southern California).

Inspirational leader with 25 years of management experience in public sector from institution to association and government, always active on international level. Passionate about understanding and changing complex systems. Well familiarized with wide range of tools, techniques and technologies from management, digitalization, human capital, innovation, problem solving, etc. With experience ‘what works when and where’. I believe that complex systems can be created or permanently changed if internal set of values and relations are set in logical balance that drives improvements like in every living organism what an organization always is.

After growing up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Brian developed his career as a consultant, manager and investor. He has worked in the UK, US and Hong Kong and has vast experience as a company director in a variety of industries.

He is currently providing strategic advice to Governments, International organizations and companies on the challenges facing healthcare in general and specifically on the Connected Health opportunity. He created the European Connected Health Alliance, a not for profit organisation which connections Governments, Industry,Research Institutes, Health Services, Patient Groups etc The Mission is to listen to the needs of patients and citizens and to introduce solutions, to provide better care.

Dragana Stanic was born on 19 March 1975 in Kotor. In 1997, she graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Belgrade University, Department of Finance, Banking and Insurance. She completed her master’s studies in 2009 at the same Faculty, with the thesis “Information-Technological Aspect of Risk Management in a Payment System”.

Her engagement with the National Bank of Serbia began in the Monetary System and Policy Department in 1998, and continued in the Payment System Department as of 2003. She has gone through the entire hierarchy of job levels in the Bank, starting as an intern and being appointed General Manager of the Payment System Department in 2015. She held this post until her appointment as Vice-Governor in September 2018. She took part in the comprehensive payment operations reform in Serbia.

On behalf of the National Bank, she participates in various task forces, set up to improve regulations and the business environment in Serbia, relating to the abolishment of the mandatory use of stamps and paper invoices, and advancement of electronic business, e-commerce, e-government, etc.

She lives in Belgrade. She is married, with one child.

Speakers

Born on 11 February 1970 in Belgrade. He completed the Sixth Belgrade High School (mathematical and technical associate) and graduated from the Faculty of Business Studies in Belgrade – Megatrend University

He completed his postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Business Studies at Megatrend University and acquired his Master’s Degree in Banking and Finance within a joint programme of the Faculty of International Economics in Belgrade – Megatrend University and the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences – “Panteion” (Athens, Greece).

Also, he completed School of National Defence – Advanced Security and Defence Studies at the University of Defence.

Currently, he is in his third year of doctoral studies in Economics, Business Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Engineering Management.

He was elected Minister of Labor, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs in June 2017.

From March 2016 to June 2017 he held the position of Minister of Defence, while from August 2012 to March 2016 he served as State Secretary in the Ministry of Defence.

He worked as Senior Finance Specialist at the Financial Department of ComTrade IT Solutions and Services d.o.o., Belgrade, from June to August 2012.

From July 2011 to June 2012, he served as Finance Manager in the Financial Department of ComTrade IT Solutions and Services d.o.o., Belgrade.

He held the position of Executive Director at “Financial stability”, Financial and Strategic Planning Agency, Belgrade, from April 2010 to July 2011.

From November 2008 to April 2010 he served as Executive Director for South East Europe at TELECRAFT (Kabel-X-Austria), Belgrade.

He worked as Executive Director of SIMM Computers, Belgrade, from January 2005 to November 2008.

Moreover, he held the position of Financial Director at TRINITY, Belgrade, from March 2001 to January 2005.

His qualification for the position he is currently holding in the government are reflected in his commitment to work, continuous personal development and education, as well as his performance in the workplace and in the working bodies under his management.

Within the above working bodies, particularly important are his positions of the President of the Gender Equality Council (UN Resolution 1325) of the Government of the Republic of Serbia he held from August 2012 to 2017 and of the National Armaments Director he held from August 2012 to December 2015.

He received “Mihajlo Petrovic – Alas” award in the field of Mathematics.

As for hobbies, he likes sports, especially rowing and reading psychology books.

He is a member of Mensa Serbia.

He was born on 3 August 1971 in Belgrade. After finishing high school, he enrolled at the Faculty of Medicine in Belgrade, which he completed in the academic year of 1996/97. In the following year, he completed his internship at the Clinical Centre of Serbia, after which he started residency in the specialty of general surgery at the Faculty of Medicine and passed the specialist exam in 2003. During the studies, but also after their completion, he participated in the development of several scientific research papers as an author and co-author.

He enrolled in doctoral studies in the field of medical epidemiology in 2008 at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, and defended his doctoral dissertation in 2015.

He did a specialised course in hepatobiliary surgery in London in 2001 at the Hammersmith Hospital, where he did advanced training in 2006 as well. At the King’s College in London, he completed a specialist transplant surgery course in 2011, and during 2012/13, he did training in the field of liver transplant surgery at Merkur Clinical Centre in Zagreb.

In 2012, he was elected clinical assistant for the subject of surgery at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade.

He was employed at the Clinic for Emergency Surgery of the Emergency Centre of the Clinical Centre of Serbia, and from 2010, he was Head of Intensive Care Unit at the Department of Surgery I. He was Director of the Emergency Centre of the Clinical Centre of Serbia and Assistant Director of the Clinical Centre of Serbia for Medical Affairs since August 2012. He was appointed Head of the Transplantation Department in 2013.

During the performance of his duties as the director of the Emergency Centre of the Clinical Centre of Serbia, he established the Department of Liver Transplantation and led a team that performed the first liver transplantation at the Emergency Centre. He founded a multidisciplinary oncology concilium, established the Department for Voluntary Blood Donation, and the Trauma Centre of the Emergency Centre on Mount Kopaonik. With his personal dedication, he contributed to the procurement of necessary medical equipment at the Emergency Centre.

He was elected Minister of Health on three occasions: on 27 April 2014, on 11 August 2016 and on 29 June 2017.

Married, father of two children.

She was born in 1978 in Belgrade, where she finished elementary school and high school. She graduated as the student of the generation at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade in 2001/02 at the International Relations Department. She completed her Master studies at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science at the University “Alpha” in Belgrade in 2013. She is currently attending doctoral studies in political science at the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Belgrade.

She received a scholarship from the Embassy of the Kingdom of Norway for the “Promising Generation” in 2001, and in 2000/01 also the scholarships from the Talent Fund of the Sebian government. She began her career as a demonstrator at the Faculty of Political Science on subjects of “Diplomacy and Diplomatic History” and “Economics of Transition”.

From 2006 to 2007, she worked in the Serbian Radical Party as an associate for international relations of Aleksandar Vucic.

She is one of the signatories-founders of the Serbian Progressive Party in 2008.

From 2007 to mid 2008, she worked at the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia as an expert associate of the parliamentary group “Forward Serbia”.

From 2009 to 2012, she was editor of the municipal newspaper Zemunske novine.

She was a participant of the EUVP (European Visitors Programme) – a programme for learning about the institutions of the European Union, Brussels / Strasbourg 2009.

In May 2012 she was elected MP in the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia from the list of the Serbian Progressive Party. She was the Chairman of the Security Services Control Committee in the Serbian parliament. During her chairmanship, the control mechanisms of this committee on security services had been significantly improved.

She was also a member of the Committee on European Integration, a member of the Joint Stabilization and Association Committee, a member of the Permanent Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the head of the delegation of the Central European Initiative, and the President of the Friendship Group with Turkey.

She was elected Minister without portfolio in charge of European integration in the Serbian government for the first time on 27 April 2014. After extraordinary parliamentary elections, on 11 August 2016, she was re-elected to the position of Minister without a portfolio in charge of European integration.

After the establishment of the Ministry of European Integration in 2017, she was elected Minister of European Integration.

She was the winner of the “Best European” award for 2015, awarded by the First European House organisation for the policy area and five other categories. In 2015, the Association of Lobbyists of Serbia presented her with the Plaque for developing the theory and practice of transparent lobbying and advocacy. In May of the same year, in the Belgrade City Assembly, she was awarded the “Duga” prize, which is awarded by the Gay Straight Alliance for helping to fight homophobia and transphobia.

The Faculty of Economics at the University of Nis awarded her in 2018 with the Appreciation Letter for the affirmation of connecting theory and practice of trade negotiation. She was awarded the recognition for her outstanding contribution to the improvement of infrastructure in the industrial zone in the municipality of Bojnik.

She is a member of the Main Board and the Presidency of the Serbian Progressive Party. By the decision of the party’s president, she was appointed International Secretary of the Serbian Progressive Party.

She speaks English and German.

She was born on 7 April 1982 in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. She graduated from the 10th Belgrade Grammar School in Belgrade and the Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade, where she graduated in 2005 in the field at the law department, with a general average grade of 9.03. From 2003 to 2005, she attended a two-year undergraduate course under the Legal Clinic programe. She was a scholarship holder awarded by the government of the Republic of Serbia. After completing her undergaduate studies, she enrolled in postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade, at the department of business law. She passed the bar exam in July 2008 and a public notary exam in June 2014.

Since February 2006, she was a trainee-volunteer at the First Municipal Court in Belgrade. After passing the bar examination, she started working in the First Municipal Court in Belgrade, at the position of a judicial assistant, where she worked until December 2008.

In the period from December 2008 to August 2009, she worked in the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Serbia as an advisor at the position at the High Judicial Council, and from April 2009 in the position for providing expert assistance to the High Judicial Council and the State Prosecutorial Council. After the founding of the High Judicial Council in August 2009, she started working in the Administrative Office of the High Judicial Council, as the legal advisor for legal affairs in the Normative Affairs Sector. Since May 2013, she was the Head of the Department for Status Matters of Judges in the Administrative Office of the High Judicial Council. Starting from 1 July 2014, she was appointed the Assistant Minister of Justice – Department for Judiciary and International Legal Assistance, and from 1 August, the Assistant Minister of Justice Sector. Since August 2016, she has been elected as the Minister of Justice of the Republic of Serbia.

She was nominated for the current position in the Government of Serbia based on more than 12 years of work experience within the judicial institutions in which she was engaged in jobs directly related to judicial reform and harmonisation of the legal framework of the Republic of Serbia with the EU acquis – she participated in drafting a number of laws, by-laws, regulations, etc. From 2014, until the election to the office of the Minister of Justice, she was a member of the European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ), as a representative of the Republic of Serbia.

Due to her participation in drafting the Law on Enforcement and Security adopted by the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia in December 2015, she received in January 2016 the recognition by the National Alliance for Local Economic Development (NALED) for her contribution to reforms and law enforcement in Serbia in 2015.

Dejan Markovic has been working in Schneider Electric Company since 2006, where he managed various projects, both in Serbia and in France. Upon his return from Grenoble, he took over management of projects in the field of oil and gas, as well as production of electricity within the company’s operation at the territories of Serbia and Montenegro. Since November 2010, he has been part of the Company’s management, first as a Manager for retail business, and since August 2012 as a Manager of the Energy Department. He has served as the General Manager of Schneider Electric since 2016.

Values that he strives to achieve are those cherished at home, which he took from his family: education; work; respect and honour. Also, he has endless belief in the power of not giving up and in hard-work, even at most difficult times, because only at those times results must be achieved sooner or later.

Alan Robertson spent over twenty years as an Editor and Producer in Glasgow, Scotland working for the BBC and other leading television companies. As Producer he made several documentaries for Channel 4 Television while running his production company Pictorial Heroes, and programmes he has edited have received BAFTA and RTS awards.

He came to Serbia in 2010 and after a spell as the Head of Film at SAE Belgrade joined Digitalkraft as VFX Producer in 2015. He has since worked closely with the company’s international clients in the USA and UK to deliver high quality products for some of the world’s leading brands (Nissan, Reebok, Hasbro, Coca-Cola, Samsung).

Digitalkraft has continued to develop and has now worked on film and television visual effects and several theme park attractions. High quality museum and gallery work for clients in Kuwait and Qatar have also become a key part of the company’s portfolio.

Branimir Dzenopoljac is Cluster Manager of the ICT Cluster of Central Serbia (www.ict-cs.org) for four and a half years, deeply involved in building partnerships and establishing intersectoral cooperation, stimulating the development of innovations in the ICT sector of Central Serbia and development of human resources in the ICT sector of Central Serbia.

Before entering ICT sector Branimir worked on a position of Senior Advisor in Territory Development Department of Regional Economic Development Ageny for Sumadija and Pomoravlje, where he coordinated several strategic planning processes for the municipalities and for the region, which, for the result had sustainable development strategies. He was a coordinator of local economic development offices of the municipalities of Sumadija and Pomoravlja and also created an interactive web platform for developing local and regional project ideas within the local and regional strategic planning processes, called Olednetwork (www.olednetwork.rs). Branimir organized many seminars, workshops and meetings, was a facilitator of many working groups meetings and workshops. During his time in REDASP he was highly involved in project cycle management and projects development according to European Union standards.

Since becoming a Cluster manager of the ICT Cluster of Central Serbia in November 2014, he participated in many ICT events and conferences, was part of several teams for organizing numerous events and also responsible for one of the biggest ICT events in Kragujevac called “ICT Start(up) And Business Cooperation Between Sweden And Serbia, conference organised on December 6th, 2016. Through Cluster he developed numerous project proposals and implemented several national and international projects aimed on fostering ICT sector of Central Serbia Development. Also coordinator of the Cluster Academy concept of informal mechanism for education of the junior developers in terms of generating additional IT work force on the market.

Branimir is also a Managing Board member of Serbian Clusters Association – SCAN and also represents ICT Cluster of Central Serbia in Cluster Council of the Serbian Chamber of Commerce, European Digital SME Alliance, Balkan, Black Sea and Baltic ICT Clusters Network – 3B ICT (www.3b-ict.net) and European Strategic Cluster Partnership for Internationalisation – ESCP-4i – GIVE, Green ICT Development.

Velibor Boskovic, born in Podgorica, Montenegro 1983, graduated and post graduated on Faculty of Economics, University of Montenegro. In his carear has worked from NGO sector to Government and private sector as well as on University of Montenegro. He was a director of first business incubator in Montenegro situated in Podgorica from 2008 to 2013. After that period he was a director of Entrepreneurship and innovation center „Tehnopolis“ in Nikšić from 2013 to 2016, when he moved to serve as general director of bigest footbal club in Montenegro „Buducnost“. In January 2019 was appointed by the Government of Montenegro as acting director of first Science and technology park in Montenegro situated in Podgorica. He is a cofounder of two private companies, one that deals with economic consulting and another from prarmaceutical indistry. He is also a President of an NGO „Center for development of entrepreneurial society“.

Robert Martic finished Faculty of Economics of the University of Tuzla and Master studies at Faculty of Economics of the University of Sarajevo. Mr. Martić worked in few international companies before joining the project in January 2005. Since beginning he is involved in development and implementation of formal and operational structure, development of innovation infrastructure from business incubator to technology park. Since October 2006 he is Director in BIT Center where he uses his competence in developing ICT SMEs in BIT Center and innovation activities connected to BIT. Project manager on all BIT projects. Speaker on many international regional and domestic conferences about entrepreneurship, SMEs, innovation and innovation infrastructures.

Jurij Bertok holds a Master Degree in Electrical Engineering from Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana. He started his career with the same faculty, where he was working as a researcher in Laboratory for Communication Devices at Department of Telecommunication.

In 1991, he joined the Ministry of Defence where he was serving in several positions. In 1993, he took over the department, and shortly afterwards he became head of the Department for System Support and development in the Information Service. In 1998, he became head of the Cabinet of the Minister of Defense, and then two years later he took over the management of the Department of Informatics and Communications at the Ministry of Defense. From 2000 to 2005 he was the head of IT and Communications Sector, and in 2005 he was appointed as CIO to lead IT operations for Ministry of defence.

Since January 2013 he has been acting as Director-General of IT Directorate at the Ministry of Public Administration, main coordination institution for the development and implementation of eGovernment in Slovenia. He was responsible for the implementation of several cross-cutting projects in public administration, such us centralization and consolidation of IT, establishment of the Slovenian Government Cloud (DRO), modernization of the Government Central Communication System (HKOM) and establishment of a unified system of the IT security policy.

Since November 2018 he is business consultant for digital transformation in public sector in Verso Alltima.

Silvia has over 20 years of experience in regional Telco and IT&ICT companies. This includes significant competence as product manager for numerous innovative solutions, project manager and expert in mobile services R&D, integration, implementation and payment solutions.

Silvia has been engaged in new technologies and innovations from the early stages of GSM, through the development and integration of eCommerce services, VAS services, to IoT, M2M (Machine-to-Machine) and various ICT services.

In Enetel Solutions, Silvia is responsible for product development and business management of several in-house developed products: Impoqo (cognitive eCommerce solution), Impoqo wit lab (data science tools), Epicenter(smart city solution) and GameUp (Corporate gamification).

Impoqo is the award-winning eCommerce solution, which is distinguished in the region by applied machine learning, advanced functionalities and performance. Innovative eCommerce leaders recognized Impoqo as an adequate partner for the new eCommerce era.

Graduated in Computer Science and Informatics at the Faculty of Mathematics in Belgrade. As a hobby, she founded the start-up Numastra.

Nikolce Davcevski is currently working as a Division Manager of Infrastructure Services in Seavus for three years. During his career, he has worked as a Technical Manager, Team Leader, IT Support Engineer, Network and System Administrator and Database Administrator which has given him a solid ground and expertise for quality project delivery and excellent managerial skills. He is always giving the best of his abilities in the most collaborative way. His meticulous ambition, responsiveness, and adaptability make him an irreplaceable IT Team asset. Not to mention his licenses and certifications from Cisco, Exemplar Global Inc. CQURE Inc. and many more. He possess excellent IT engineering skills in the areas of VMware, EMC Storage and Brocade SAN, HP Proliant and IBM xSeries servers, SQL Databases and the list could go on. He has a big drive to learn and develop and always seeks new opportunities for improvement.

Jelena is responsible for the development and execution of local strategies in these critical markets and maintaining strong partnerships with key customers and public sectors. She has been with Mastercard since 2009, during which time she has been expanding Mastercard business with non-traditional customers, gained new and exclusive customers and managed to grow the share in these three markets.

Jelena has extensive experience in the banking sector in Serbia, having worked in Card departments of two major banks- Banca Intesa and Vojvodjanska bank. Jelena holds a Bachelor degree in banking, financing and insurance from the Faculty of Economy, University of Belgrade.

Zoran was Born in Banja Luka (Bosnia) in 1971. He finished Electronics and Telecommunications Faculty and enrolled MD programme “Entrepreneurship in IT Society” He is a senior business developer and project manager, who since 1995 has successfully managed over 35 small to big international projects with various contractors such as European Commission, UNDP, World Bank and others. His expertise ranges from IT & Business alignment consulting, business acceleration facilities, education, to skillful fund raising activities and project management. He is co-author of several strategic documents made for BiH government in the fields of eLearning, eHealth and eGovernance, acting also as a lead eLearning expert for Bosnian universities in period from 2002-2007. Being entrepreneur himself, Zoran ran for 10 years with his own software development & IT consulting company.

It was followed by another exciting 10 years working as an Executive Director for International Operations for Norwegian company BOOST Global Innovation, setting-up innovation centres and development hubs in Western Balkans and East Africa. By the end of 2017 he started ROBOKIDS, the first STEM education centre and makerspace in Republic of Srpska. The centre runs with nearly 30 STEM courses and over 600 trainees in 2018, including 2000 visitors at the open doors days. ROBOKIDS is now developing a STEM academy, as a complementary STEM education to the formal schooling, expanding its network to other cities. Zoran is married, being father of two. His likes outdoor activities, particularly kayaking, hiking and diving. Besides that, he is a fan of digital imagery and graphic design.

Branka Andjelkovic is a Co-founder and the Programme Director of the reputable think-tank in Serbia, Public Policy Research Center. She leads and brings together the team of innovative, committed, and visionary researchers and practitioners which research and advance the topic of the future of work in the Serbian society. Branka employed her experience of working on three continents in advancing the public policy landscape in Serbia.

Her research interests focus on contested realities of the future of work, and how digitalization shapes the society and determines the nature and quality of work.

Branka holds Master of Arts in Public Administration from the Harvard University and a master degree from the Central-European University, Department of International Relations and European Studies.

Daniel Danilovski holds a B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering, with 20+ years of professional experience and expertise in developing system infrastructure for complex digital transformation solutions and trust services.

Daniel is Executive Technical Director of Nextsense and trust services expert. His dedication to development of advanced technologies for improvement of organizations’ performance and their digital transformation, resulted in introducing Nextsense’s innovative solutions and products for digital signing and working with e-documents. With Daniel’s significant contribution, Nextsense developed the digital signing portfolio of products and services – Nextsense Signing Suite.

His proven expert capabilities are reflected in numerous, successfully implemented digital signing solutions, digitalization and business processes automation, positioning Daniel as an expert for complete secure solutions for providing e-identification services, authentication and integrity, in compliance with the European regulation eIDAS.

His proven professionalism and dedication to new technologies, enriched Nextsense with international awards, including the prestigious – Microsoft Partner of the Year.

Rok Kvaternik published his first textbook – in 1988 at the age of 17. Three years later, in 1991, he founded a start-up publishing house which evolved into the biggest textbook publishing house in Slovenia. More than a decade later, his team joined Ernst Klett Verlag, the biggest German Textbook Publisher based in Stuttgart, which is today also the biggest European Textbook Publisher. Klett EE & Baltics currently includes companies spanning from Poznan, Poland, to Athens, Greece. It employs more than 500 people and delivers textbooks in all forms of media for public and private education.

Rok has thus more than 25 years of experience in publishing (including cookbooks). In 2004, his passion to tackle the markets of former Yugoslavia kicked off Klett’s expansion in the Balkans. The company founded subsidiaries in Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo. Today, the group resonates with eight offices and as market leaders in Slovenia, Serbia, Bulgaria and soon, hopefully, Croatia too.

With his innovation and entrepreneurial skills, Rok proves that traditional printed educational publishing can evolve into completely digital or blended products, which serve the needs of the modern teacher. Klett received the Gold Award for the Best Digital Product at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2014 and is continuing the digital evolution in most of the countries where it is present.

In his private life, Rok Kvaternik is a passionate traveller and admirer of exotic cultures, an art lover (an expert on Plečnik’s architecture), a violinist, a blogger on restaurants, an amateur photographer, a PADI diver- He has two sons and lives between Belgrade, Lufthansa/Air Serbia, Ljubljana and Istria.

Marko Mandić is the Head of sales for business and public solutions at S&T Serbia. His areas of interests and expertise are eGoverment, business analysis, application software development, digitalization generally, but also enterprise resource planning systems (e.g. SAP, Infor) – and their application both in private and public sector.

He has graduated and received his master’s degree from Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade. In his previous career he has worked as an Advisor in Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Society, but also acted as the Assistant director of National Information Technology and Internet Agency – having knowledge of the eGoverment System from both sides.

Among other fields of expertise, he has substantial knowledge of digital agriculture, as he is involved in implementation of Rural development IT solution for authorization and control of commitments, payments, business, reporting and document management system in the Republic of Serbia.

Born in Belgrade where she completed the Faculty of International Management and received the title of Graduate Manager of International Business. Ana also completed the Advance Undergraduate studies for the most promising students of Belgrade University at the Belgrade Open School. After spending a period in a private sector, she continued her professional career in the public sector, as Chief of Staff at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus, a coordinator of Serbia economic policy and leader of the European integration process. Before joining the FIC, Ana was working in the World Bank Group as the Business Enabling Environment Specialist at the International Finance Corporation, FIAS. As part of the team she worked on analyzing key investment climate issues with goal to improve the quality of regulations. Ana participated in The Fortune/State Department International Women Leaders Mentoring Program 2008 and is member of the Belgrade Open School Mentoring Programme and the National Women Mentoring Women program.

Nataša Andjelkovic is a Head of Pre-school Education in EdTech Center Western Balkans and pre-school teacher in Preschool institution „11. april“. She is a blogger, book writer, head of training and co-author of two programs for pre-school teachers and many scientific papers and presentations at international conferences in the field of integration of digital technologies in preschool education.

Director of the IT and Entrepreneurship team in the Office of the Prime Minister of Serbia, working on supporting the growth of knowledge-based economy in the country.

Previously, he was co-founder of Belgrade Venture Forum, the largest innovation, investments and entrepreneurship forum in the region. He was also a business growth consultant with 20 years of professional experience.

Ivan Jovetic is an entrepreneur and researcher. Mr. Jovetic holds MSci degree from “Entrepreneurial Economy” Postgraduate Studies and is PhD candidate at the PhD Studies “International Economy” at the UDG.

Ivan Jovetic has co-founded MSI INVEST Ltd. in 2006. through which he has been executing his own and his partners’ entrepreneurial ideas. Mr. Jovetic has acted as Company’s CEO between 2016 and 2018. Company has been involved in several sectors.

Since 2007 he has been working at the UDG – Faculty for International Economy, Finance and Business as a Teaching Fellow. Since 2013 has also been acting as Vice-Dean at the UDG – Faculty for Sports Management.

Mr. Jovetic is co-founder of MEBAN (Montenegrin Business Angels Network) as well as WBAF (World Business Angels Investment Forum) High Commissioner for Montenegro. He is also WBAF International Academic Committee member. He is EBAN’s Assembly member as well as EBAN CEE Committee member.

He has also been working at the Institute for Strategic Studies and Prognoses since 2005 where he has been involved in and led numerous national and European projects. Mr. Jovetic has been Vice President of the Board of Euro-Atlantic Club of Montenegro from 2006 till 2009. He has also been Executive Director of Centre for European Education and Studies an ECSA World member. In addition, he is member of the two Working Groups for negotiations with the European Union.

In 2018. Mr. Jovetic has been elected as President of the Council of RTCG (National broadcasting company comprehending television channels, radio channels as well as Internet portal).

Mr. Jovetic’s fields of interest can be divided into three categories: (i) entrepreneurial (comprehending tourism & hotels, property management, education and technology), (ii) research/academic (comprehending cyber security, defense economy, technology, EU, NATO) and (iii) startups and angel investments.

Ivan Jovetic is member of Society of Economists and Managers of Montenegro.

Edin Charlie Saracevic is serial entrepreneur with his first Internet startup dating back in 1999. During his extensive carrier, he mastered building multiple successful B2B and B2C online businesses from ground up, pioneering in web based location mapping, geo referenced content delivery, big data analysis, personal data applications and web based security sharing.

In October 2013 he started his project HUB387. This was first technology park in Sarajevo, envisioned as a new generation of work environment fostering new methods of building vibrant and collaborative IT community. As part of HUB387 he established NEST71, first co-working office space and soon after he founded ACADEMY387, first open educational platform offering range of intense expert courses covering different topics, skill-sets and know-hows. Today, HUB387 is community of more then 20+ IT companies and more then 300+ engineers collocated in one place. NEST71 became startup incubator producing several successful startups: balkanvibe.com (first regional portal for tour booking) and bookvar.co (first e-learning platform) and HaBEEtat (first integrated smart beehive).

Tose Kocevski is accomplished entrepreneur, business builder, team leader, strategist, and consultant withmore than 25 years of experience. He is recognized and respected by his colleagues and clients as excellent atassessing business dynamics, seeing opportunities, creating a vision for change and growth, and building andleading a team to collaborate and achieve exceptional results together within start-up, turnaround, and rapid change environments. Extensive experience with highly engineered systems, which require deep understandingof critical business drivers in multiple markets and industries; highly successful in building relationships with keypublics; seizing new opportunities and having control of critical problem areas, while delivering on customercommitments. Customer-focused and performance-driven. Led and motivated worldwide teams comprised ofmore than 5000 employees and managed projects exceeding hundreds of millions revenue.

Marko started his career at IDEA in 2008, and since 2014 he has been part of Mercator S. He steered his career from sales to logistics, through different experiences — from the wholesale centre management to managing the company’s individual and full logistics service.

Over the years, he took part in various projects such as the WMS implementation at the company, organizational development, supply chain strategy development, business process changes, negotiations with suppliers about central distribution and electronic data exchange.

Since 2017 he has been holding the position of the manager of in-store logistics, where he joins the company’s core business retail with logistics – in terms of integrating shared ERP solutions, synchronizing processes, and further optimizing solutions.

Fabian Stephany is a Computational Social Scientist. Fabian’s research focuses on the application of data science methods in fields like education, migration, innovation, and public policy. Currently, he examines the geographies of digital knowledge creation of online platforms in cooperation with the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University. He is a Fellow at the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital in Vienna and a Research Affiliate at the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society in Berlin, Germany.

As an Economist and free-lance Data Scientist, Fabian has been working for various actors in the international policy landscape, such as the Viennese think tank Agenda Austria, the United Nations Development Programme or the OECD in Paris. Fabian holds degrees in Economics and Social Sciences from different European institutions, including Universitá Bocconi Milan and Cambridge University.

Driton Emini received his Master Degree (Dipl.-Ing.) in Telecommunication from the Technical University of Berlin. For his Master Thesis he was awarded with the Siemens Excellence Award.

He started his carrier in Teleca Nürnberg/Germany as Verification Engineer and was involved in different projects working in different countries.

2009 he moved to T-Mobile Austria where he was working as Program Manager until 2012. 2012 he became Senior Manager within Radio Networks department and one year later he was promoted to Vice President Radio Networks.

Since August 2018 Driton is leading the Next Generation Networks & IoT. In his role he is focused on introducing new technologies such as 5G, cooperating with start-ups & partner as well as with universities.

Within Deutsche Telekom Group he is representing T-Mobile Austria and contributing to several steering boards with the focus on innovation topics.

Prof. Dr. George Dimitrov is a Member of the Board of Directors of Evrotrust Technologies JSCo. founder and chief expert of the Law and Internet Foundation and a partner at Dimitrov, Petrov & Co. Law Firm with 20 years professional experience and is consistently praised as one of the world’s leading practitioners by different globally recognised legal editions and directories.

He is the first in Bulgaria to receive the academic title “Professor of Law and Information Technologies” and is a lecturer of ICT law at all premier universities and educational institutions in Bulgaria. He holds a PhD degree from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.

Prof. George Dimitrov is a leading expert and head of a number of working groups drafting the contemporary Bulgarian legislation in the field of ICT, namely: the Electronic Document and Electronic Trust Services Act, the Electronic Commerce Act, the E-Government Act, the eID Act, the Strategy for eGovernment Regulations Governing e-Justice and many others. He has served as a national correspondent to many EU projects for implementation of different EU directives on electronic signatures and certification services, electronic documents and e-governance in Bulgaria. Additionally, he has advised the government of the Republic of Macedonia in adapting the local legislation to the Regulation 910/2014 (eIDAS). Furthermore, Prof. Dr. Dimitrov is currently a member of an expert group on Remote eID/KYC and AML guidelines ran by European Commission in Brussels.

Bardhyl Jashari is the Executive Director of Metamorphosis Foundation (North Macedonia). His professional interests are mainly in the sphere of new technologies, media, education and open government. He has run national and international-scope projects, involving tight cooperation with other international organizations, governmental bodies, the business and the civic sector. Bardhyl is a strong advocate for open government, open education and media freedoms, For more than 20 years, he managed a large number of e-government, educational and media projects, creating co-funding partnerships and investing in open government, social innovation and media development. Most recently, Bardhyl worked on the Action Plan for Implementing the Open Data Charter of Kosovo (2017) and was the co-author of the Open Data Strategy for Macedonia (2018). Bardhyl holds a master degree at Paris 12 University-Faculty of Public Administration (France) and an Information System Designer Degree from University of Zagreb (Croatia).

Business advisor in IT industry, working with customers on discovering and leveraging power of digital transformation, in CEE region. Slavisa has started his career as consultant in Calsberg Serbia and further lead it as presales specialist on SAP projects in European countries.

Since, 2013 his focus was developing SAP presales team of Sought East Europe in order to support customers in creating business strategies in digital economy.

With more than 15 years of experience on projects in real and public sector Slavisa owns extended knowledge of business processes, digital challenges and innovative technology possibilities for growth.

Result driven and highly motivated Retail Executive with over 15 years’ leadership experience in Food/Consumer electronics/Medical equipment industry, consistently enchasing business results and strengthening customer-focused operations. Sees the big picture and tenaciously pursues opportunities for the profitable growth, delivering bottom line results and demonstrating entrepreneurial skills alongside strong business acumen.

In 2007 he joind Delta Maxi as Project Manager in Operation department. Last 12 years he was involved in different position in Operation department in all formats, from small convinient stores to the hipermakets. He drives change and succesfull story in Maxi supermarkets UVP model.

Last two years he leads all delhaize stores and technical department as Vice President Operations.

From 2019 he is appointed as Vice President of Supply Chanin and IT, with expetation to lead these two departments toward digitalization and new more efficient opearation models.

Dzenana Aladjuz is Director of INFOHOUSE SCO organisation in Bosnia-Hercegovina. She holds a BA degree in comparative literature and library science, she works as a free-lance journalist of 25 years and is trainer in several different areas.

She is well known for her work in public information and advocacy regarding certain needs of one or several population groups through campaigns and actions, as well as a public relations expert, work on media campaigns and advocating for change though using partnership or media. She also worked as an advisor and trainer for CSOs in Serbia, Croatia and BiH.

Predrag Tadic teaches courses in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at the School of Electrical Engineering (University of Belgrade). He graduated in the field of Robust Control (2005) and did his magister studies on Speech Processing (2009). The main focus of his Ph.D. studies was Fault Diagnosis (2015). After graduating, his research centered around automatic control and fault diagnosis in thermal power plants. He also developed simulators, autopilots and inertial navigation systems for guided missiles and autonomous helicopters. More recently, his focus has shifted towards Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, with several ongoing projects related to applications in finance, medicine, and computer vision. He attended DeepMind’s Transylvanian Machine Learning Summer School in 2018 and is an active member of the Machine Learning and Applications group of researchers and enthusiasts and a member of the organizing team for Microsoft’s PSIML Machine Learning Summer School in Petnica.

Marina Blagojevic is vocational engineer of electrical and computer engineering with specialization on E-business. She works with private sector, public sector and academia on cooperation improvement, knowledge sharing, innovation development and capacity building. She is experienced in managing activities such as support to SMEs, planning processes, strategy development, skill improvement, establishment of working groups and communication between stakeholders.

For last 7 years she is Acting Director and Project coordinator at ICT Network (www.ict-net.com), a non for profit business association devoted to the development of ICT sector in Serbia.

She was actively involved in establishment of two regional networks, SEE IT and 3B ICT Cluster network (www.3b-ict.net), where together with international partners she participate in developing cooperation and setting of ecosystem that today gathers large number of business support organization and companies not only from Western Balkan, but also from Black Sea region.

More then 15 years’ experience in the sector of telecommunications, broadband services and technologies. As a C level officer in the last 10 years, taking part in many regional initiatives in the IT and Telecommunication sectors.

Implementing various successful practices, company and socially wise, with his proven entrepreneurial and managerial skills.

Through the high corporate culture and proven social responsibility, as a board chairman and member in MASIT, working on IT establishment as a basic sector for rapid economy and social growth.

High degree of knowledge within international IT and Telecom markets, with special emphasis on the EMEA region.

Married and a father of 8 years old boy.

Nikola Mehandzic is a Director of Business Development for Western Balkans and he is responsible for the development of Mastercard business in the field of digital payments and e-commerce, as well as for the implementation of these solutions in fast-moving and dynamic markets.

Nikola is responsible for developing and implementing new business projects, establishing partnerships with traditional and non-traditional local players within the financial industry, mobile operators, NFC-based partners and digital wallets, processors, IT companies and others.

Nikola started his career in Mastercard in 2012 as Customer Delivery Manager and was in charge of implementing projects with a focus on digital solutions. Nikola also has extensive experience in payment processing, project management and work he has acquired with key clients at First Data, a global leader in the field of trading technologies and solutions.

Nikola completed his Master studies in the area of International Business and Management at the University of Belgrade and Middlesex University, and also holds a degree in Project Management.

Helping entrepreneurs and companies get access to infrastructure, people, financing and valuable advice. Senior manager leading various companies through the growth and expansion process. Experience in M&A, upscaling, turnaround and downsing in ICT and related industries. Helped several startups achieve maturity/exits as well as several mature companies achieve regional expansion.

PhD degree in economic sciences in the fields of finance and banking. Significant experience in the banking sector (general manager, president of the EB-CEO, executive director, adviser to the CEO … for more than 10 years); Rich experience in the insurance sector (Director General of the insurance company – CEO, over 7 years);

Main references:

Managing the processes of bank integration, developing and improving governance and creating a profitable portfolio of legal and natural persons, developing and implementing a growth strategy, asset management, increasing profitability, risk management, human resources, strategic planning …;

Successful organization and leading the Due-diligence process in two banks (Novosadska and Dinara) and one insurance company (Basler).

Areas of expertise: Banking, Finances, Insurance, Mergers and acquisitions, Sale preparation of banks and insurance companies.

Court expert for the economic and financial area since 2014. Speaks fluent English. Married, father of two children.

Ms Bojana Tomic-Brkusanin heads International Relations and Development Department of the Republic of Serbia Securities Commission. She is a highly-skilled professional in charge of coordination of international cooperation, EU accession negotiations, compliance, and project management. Ms Tomix-Brkuaanin holds a master’s degree in Business Law, from the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Law, with a GPA of 9.5. She has more than nine years of experience obtained in international and national environments at managerial and consulting positions (FAO, UNDP, Ministry of Agriculture and Securities Commission). Her experience ranges from international relations to compliance issues, drafting regulations and alignment of the national legal framework with the EU acquis.

Ms Tomix-Brkuaanin recently designed and initiated the Securities Commission’s public consultation process regarding the issue, trading and additional regulation of cryptocurrencies and digital tokens in Serbia.

Mr. Milenkovic, was involved in various forms of civic activism since student age, as a participant and a founder of several students and youth movements.

Since 2002, he is president of European Youth Centre, largest Serbian youth organization, a member of European Youth Card Association (www.eyca.org) in Serbia. He served as a member of EYCA Board from 2005 till 2012.

In 2002, he founded a Global Travel Group, exclusive representative of ISIC (International Student Identity Card, www.isic.org) for Serbia. He is serving as a member of ISIC Board from 2012 onward, responsible for technological development. Since December 2018, he is Acting Managing Director of ISIC Global Office, based in Amsterdam.

He is devoted to connecting Southeast European youth in diverse and inclusive European community.

Luis received his university degree from the Faculty of Popular Music at the University of West London. After completing his studies, he joined pi-top as a sales executive and has since built successful partnerships across Europe with different organisations, business entities and educational institutions.

He shares with pi-top a passion for Education and the desire to disrupt the status quo. Pi-top’s mission isn’t just to change the face of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Math (STEAM) in schools, it’s to change the education system itself. In many classrooms, people learn by ‘instructionism’ – teachers deliver information to learners who have to memorise it and repeat it back later in some sort of test. This isn’t learning, it’s remembering, and it’s useless for equipping people with the practical skills and experience they need to face an ever-changing world. We believe in something better…

Srdjan Krco is a co-founder and CEO of DunavNET, a company designing turnkey IOT solutions. He has over 20 years of experience, working with large multinational companies and international collaborative research and innovation projects.

Currently, he is coordinating the research and innovation H2020 project TagItSmart, creating enablers for IoT of mass-market goods. Srdjan is one of the founding members of the International IoT Forum and is actively participating in IERC (IoT European Research Cluster), IoT-EPI (IoT European Platforms Initiative) and AIOTI (Alliance for IoT Innovation) activities. In 2007, Srdjan won the Innovation Engineer of the Year award in Ireland.

He has published over 15 patents and more than 70 papers at international conferences and journals and is a frequent speaker at international events addressing IoT and its applications. Srdjan is a Senior IEEE member.

Sara Lerota was born in 1989, in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She represented her country by participating in a world art project “PLUS YOU“ which brought together artists from all over the world and which was organized by Brigitte Williams and exhibited at Woburn Studios (Slade-UCL) in London, United Kingdom. She was selected by the Broadway Artists Group (BAG) as one of the Winners of the Art On Call (AOC) Awards and received the most votes from AOC Popular Choice Poll Awards for her pencil work.

Her works were published in the Cut-Click art and design magazine (UK), the Catapult art magazine (USA), Artists Gone Global book (USA), etc. Sara exhibited her work on „Open call for artists“, „Frieze projects“(Brina Thurston), London, UK. She also participated in the “Potpourri” exhibition in ASA Art Gallery in Sarajevo, and in group exhibitions/projects in United Kingdom (London, Nottingham, Brighton, Wimbledon, St. Leonards, Swindon, Walthamstow, Bath, Croydon…), Spain (Barcelona), Croatia (Zagreb), Portugal (Evora), Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Germany (Berlin), USA (Concord, New Hampshire, Anaheim, L.A….) etc.

Sara´s favourite medium are acrylics, but she´s currently discovering the usage of technology (3D modeling & 3D printing) in her conceptual work and is open to using other mediums in a search for a perfect tool for expressing her ideas.

She is a member of “Art on Call” art organisation from L.A., California (USA), a member of DHLU (Society of Croatian Visual Artists), and a committee member of “Art Language Location” (Cambridge, UK).

Jan Kobler is a managing partner at South Central Ventures, a fund group focusing on early stage technology investments in South East Europe and has been involved in investment management since 2008. Jan is enthusiastic about working closely with great founders and being an active partner in helping them build their businesses. Apart from the investment side experience, he also spent a considerable part of his career having various operational responsibilities in early stage businesses, primarily in leadership, sales, business development and financial management. Jan currently lives with his family in Belgrade, Serbia.

Dr. Fabian Braesemann is Data Scientist at the Oxford Internet Institute working on the Geonet and Big Data and Human Development projects. In these projects, he investigates Sub-Saharan Africa’s participation in the digital knowledge economy, online communities of Islam scholars on Twitter, mobile phone data on mobility in Rwanda’s capital Kigali, and outsourcing in online labour platforms.

Moreover, he works on a project that investigates Wikipedia data as a means to approximate regional distribution of knowledge and human capital. His research interest is on the application of data mining techniques on data sources like Web of Science, Twitter or Wikipedia to evaluate questions from economics and social sciences.

Broadly, Fabian’s research is on quantitative approaches in internet geography, digital inequality and participation in the knowledge economy. Fabian holds a PhD in Economics from Vienna University of Economics and Business (2016).

Lawrence is an international policy economist, specializing in the micro foundations of economic growth. He has advised governments around the world on private sector development and innovation strategy, designing policy models that boost market dynamism, increase productivity, and raise cross-border trade. At the Open Data Institute, Lawrence leads several projects on the economic applications of open data. One of his projects is on the potential for agent-based modelling to help policy-makers better understand the causes and effects of their interventions, applied to data portability. Another of his projects is on data-enabled digital trade, and how governments might be able to boost economic growth through ethical treatment of data that allows it to be used across borders. Lawrence worked at the World Bank in Moscow and was part of efforts to institutionalize Russia’s post-Soviet market liberalization. He worked with internationally recognized research economists to understand the nature of firm growth and market dominance in the Russian economy, advising on competition and anti-monopoly reforms; and worked with ministers on how to foster innovation and market dynamism in a low-trust environment with weak contract enforcement.

Dr Djordje Krivokapic LL.M. is a lawyer by education, focused on intersection of modern society and emerging technology as his primary professional focus and academic interest.

Djordje serves as Assistant Professor at the Business Systems Organization Department of the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade. He is also the Co-Founder of SHARE Foundation where he established an interdisciplinary research and advocacy team fighting for the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights, particularly in the areas of privacy, free speech, security and open access to knowledge.

After graduating from the Faculty of Law the University of Belgrade, in 2006, Djordje enrolled to the University of Pittsburgh Law School, graduating as LL.M. in International Commercial Law. Before joining academia, Đorđe was legal practitioner at Karanovic & Nikolic Law Office, the leading commercial law office in Western Balkans. During 2010 and 2012, he cooperated with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University as a visiting researcher. In 2016, he defended doctoral thesis on the topic Reputation, Internet & Conflict of Laws at the Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade.

Odeta Barbullushi was born in Shkodra, Albania on June 16, 1979. She received her doctorate (PhD) in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom in 2010. She holds an MA in Contemporary European Studies from the University of Sussex, UK (2004, with Honors), and another one in International Relations and European Studies Central European University, Budapest (2003). She graduated in Journalism from the University of Tirana in 2001. In 2013, Ms. Barbullushi held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Graz Karl Franzen, Austria.

Before joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Barbullushi has held several research and management positions in the academic sector. From 2007 to 2008 she worked as a lecturer at the Centre for European Studies, University of Birmingham where she taught the modules EU in a Globalizing World and Political History of Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th Century (2007-2008). From 2009 to 2014 she worked at the European University of Tirana, initially as the Head of Department of Political Science and International Relations, and most recently as the Vice-Rector for Research and Methodology. She has taught several courses in the field of international relations, such as The Albanian Question and Albania’s Foreign Policy, Comparative Foreign Policy Analysis, Theories and Issues of International Relations, etc.

Dr Barbullushi’s research and academic work was funded by a number of prestigious international scholarships and awards, such as Open Society Institute (OSI) postgraduate fellowship, Sasakawa Fellowship, Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Award, Ernst Mach Global Fellowship, and ‘Brain Gain Incentive’ grant. She has coordinated and been part of a number of regional projects in the field of capacity building in research, human rights in higher education, European integration of the Western Balkan, etc. In between her postgraduate studies, she worked as adviser for the media at the office of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Integration in 2003.

Ms. Barbullushi’s portfolio at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs covers primarily Albania’s relations with the countries of the region, both at the bilateral level and in the context of international organizations, and Albania’s relations with the EU and EU member states. Other responsibilities include issues related to European and regional security, etc.

Read more at www.globsec.org/speakers/odeta-barbullushi/

Mladen Alempijević is an Independent Adviser for Public procurement office. He has been working on the development and maintains of database on public procurement contracts for more than 14 years and has been in charge of making annual reports on public procurements. He has worked as an administrator of Public procurement portal since 2009. Before that he had been involved in policy setting and implementation of a Portal. He actively participated as member of working group of Open Data Open Opportunities that the Office runs with support of UNDP.

Mr. Eduard Shalsi was born in Korça on April 1, 1968. He is married with Ms. Era Shalsi and they have three children, Patrick, Samuel and Kler.

Mr. Shalsi gratuated from Faculty of Natural Sciences, Biology and Chemistry, University of Tirana, in 1990. Mr. Shalsi has gone through a complete cycle of qualifications, in and out of the country. During the period from 1996-2002, he has tought numerous seminars and training on Banking issues such as Deposits, Import-Export, Credit, Accounting, Business Card.

Mr. Eduard Shalsi was the Chairman of Committee of Productive Activities, Trade and Environment, in the Parliament of Albania (2017-2019), also former Minister of State for Local Government and Anticorruption Issues, during 2017.

In 2003, after 7 years in the banking sector, became CEO of Insurance Institute SA (INSIG SA), the first insurance company of Albania, and a year later appointed firstly as Chief of Staff of Edi Rama, (at that time, Mayor of Tirana) and after in 2007 came into office as Deputy Mayor of Tirana, period during which he led some important projects for the capital.

Has been elected MP in the district of Tirana in 2009, also in District of Berat in 2013 and has been active in parliamentary life. Actually is elected MP in the 2017 elections, but this time in the district of Korca. As MP, is also in charge as Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and Member of the EU-Albania Association-Stabilization Commission.

Mr. Eduard Shalsi was appointed Minister of State for Protection of Entrepreneurship on January 2019.

Minister Shalsi speaks three foreign languages: English, Italian and Greek.

In 2016, Mr. Shalsi is also elected President of the Albanian Chess Federation.

Vjekoslav Bobar, Ph.D., was born on 03 February 1979 in Vlasenica, Republic of Srpska. He is graduated and received his Masters Degree at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences in Belgrade as one of the best students in his generation. He received his PhD in technical sciences on the subject „Possibilities to improvement of business decision making system in eProcurement“.

He has over 15 years of professional experience in private and government field.

From 2004 to 2005, he worked as Advisor for Business and Database in the Regional Centre for Amall and Medium-Sized Enterprises Development Belgrade d.o.o where he was responsible for database development, local area network administration and web site design. In same period, he worked as a teaching assistant at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences in Belgrade.

In the period from 2005 to 2014, he was a Director of Information and Telecommunication Department in Government of Serbia – Administrative Agency for Common Services of Government Authorities, responsible for information technology, telecommunications networks and development and implementation of many government information systems.

From May 2016 to November 2016, he was a Director of Information and Telecommunications Department in the Electric Power Industry of Serbia, responsible for implementation, development and coordination several projects from information technology area.

In the period from November 2016 to February 2019, he was a Director of Procurement and Commercial Department, in the Electric Power Industry of Serbia, where he was responsible for realization of public procurement tenders (finished over 10.000 tenders for two years) and contributed to the implementation public e-procurement software called JANA (JAvna NAbavka), in the Electric Power Industry of Serbia.

As of February 2019, he has worked as an advisor to the General Manager in the Electric Power Industry of Serbia, responsible for ICT projects.

Lejla is currently working with UNDP’s Istanbul Regional Hub on open data in Europe and Central Asia. She has worked on use and re-use of open data to increase transparency and improve public services, leading initiatives which aim to bring citizens, including youth, closer to their decision-makers through the use of technology, and engaging young people as agents of change through collaborative design methods.

Prior to UNDP, she has worked with Norwegian development assistance and political affairs, and the World Bank in the area of human development. She has diverse research interests, having published research on the role of civil society in the fight against corruption, implementation of the freedom of information legislation, international efforts in state-building contexts, the state of LGBT rights in Kosovo*, and the importance of women’s empowerment for Kosovo’s* development.

She holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, and has completed her bachelor studies at the American University in Bulgaria in political science and business administration.

*This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.

Vladimir Trkulja is a Venture Fellow at UNICEF Global Innovation Fund, which invests in startups in the Western Balkans region developing open-source innovative technology with the goal to improve the lives of children. He is a strong believer in open-source as a business model, and looking for teams developing products based on AI/ML, Blockchain, VR/AR, Drones, IoT, UAV & 3D printing.

Vladimir graduated at Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade and has extensive experience in leading tech teams and developing products for the global market. He is a Certified Digital Transformation Expert, working with small and medium companies in defining strategies to embrace digital reality and develop new business models.

Vladimir co-founded Startit, an organization that runs several tech hubs across Serbia and an online tech media, reaching more than 70.000 people every month with the goal to make technology and entrepreneurship more widespread in Serbia.

Ms. Manic Petronikolos is a dedicated professional, with over 20 years of experience from all sectors – private and public sectors, NGOs and international organizations. The last 14 years she has been working for the United Nations/UNDP, with the last 11 years as a team leader for the Governance Cluster and as of January 2019 – Acceleration for SDGs Cluster in UNDP Serbia. Ms. Manic Petronikolos has experience working in a multitude of programmatic areas, ranging from more classical ones such as parliamentary development, public administration reform, public finance management to digital transformation, open data, circular economy, Belt and Road initiative, etc. She has been active in introducing the latest trends in crafting the #NextGenUNDP, such as a platform approach in concept development, a portfolio approach in implementation, mainstreaming innovation in clusters, etc. Ms. Manic Petronikolos is also the focal point in UNDP Serbia for establishment of an Accelerator Lab, as a part of the world’s largest learning network with labs being established in 60 countries globally.

Zhuljeta Koci has over 20 years of experience in Information Security Management consultancy with governmental organizations, such as the German Federal Chancellery and the Federal Ministries. She is currently leading several IT Security projects for the Germany Ministry of Defense and the German Navy.

Zhuljeta has been certified by the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) as “Audit Team Leader for ISO 27001 Audits” and “Information Security Revisor”. She has acted as both, auditor and revisor, on behalf of the BSI.

Zhuljeta has in-depth knowledge of Public Key Infrastructures (PKI). She has extensively worked in implementing PKI standards within the private sector as well as with various governmental agencies. In the past, she was particularly involved in the development of the vast majority of Certification Service Providers accredited under the German Digital Signature Act. She has profound expertise in the eIDAS Regulation and advises a number of Trust Service Providers on its implementation.

Zhuljeta has graduated in Mathematics from the University of Hamburg and lives in Germany.

Srdjan Jovanovic is Head of Engineering at HTEC Group, where he was involved into numerous projects spanning through various verticals and involving clients like Intel, Qualcomm, IBM and similar. At the same time, he is CTO of HTEC Group’s medical spin-off named Humeds, where he leads the team of engineers that produced CE marked novel 3-lead dry electrodes ECG mobile recorder together with the proprietary algorithms for detection of arrhythmias, awarded by the MIT.

From years 2007-2012 Srdjan was the Head of R&D of German medical devices company, where he successfully led the development of high end CE marked medical devices.

Srdjan was managing electronics course at Petnica Science Center, and participating in education of gifted young students from the year 1999. He is proficient with complex DSP algorithms, AI, custom electronics engineering and embedded systems design, etc.

Aleksandar is born in 1980 in Ljubljana. He has a degree from Faculty of Economics, University in Belgrade and has 18+ years of experience in leading and managing initiatives in area of education, digital skills and education technology. He is father of two.

Currently Aleksandar is Country of Director for Serbia in Semos Education, which is one of the largest IT training providers in the Western Balkans with over 60,000 attendees to date. Aleksandar is also CEO of EdTech Center in the Western Balkans, a charity that has a mission to improve students learning by better connecting world of education and world of technology.

Aleksandar has a rich experience in managing programs with a focus on pre-school, primary and secondary education. He has provided consultancy to governments in the Western Balkans region, in order for them to develop and implement new policies and standards in the field of education, entrepreneurship and employment. Some of his achievements include:

• He is one of the founders of EdTech Center Western Balkans, a only regional platform that is managing EdTech ecosystem and works with Education, Business and Government sector;
• He has successfully set-up company in Serbia, Semos Education that delivers high end trainings (AWS, Microsoft, Cisco, VmWare, etc.) to business and individual customers;
• He has developed and led education programs for British Council in the Western Balkans with focus on EdTech, Entrepreneurship, VET and Digital Skills;
• He was team leader of IPA 2012 project “Increasing the Effectiveness of Employment Policies towards Disadvantaged Groups” that provided training and pre-qualification opportunity to over 2600 individuals from Serbia;
• He has established and managed the New Technologies in Education show, that was attended by over 7500 people in 2017. This program has provided 80,000 hours of training and professional development for educators, primary and secondary school teachers in the field of technology-assisted learning;
• Implemented the projects which aimed to develop a new education curriculum for elementary schools with a focus on the introduction of coding, and the development of the Digital Competence Framework for Teachers;
• Managed a project “Guide to better Cooperation with Employers”, which aimed to support all VET school from the Western Balkans to establish better connection school and employers and prepare young people for world of work;
• Manage the project “Support to Innovative Small and Medium Enterprises” supported by USAID, aimed at increasing competitiveness in the SME market;
• EACEA external evaluator for Erasmus projects

Nenad gained experience in project management, finance, human resources and fundraising while working in for USAID, UNDP and OCD. MSc in Sustainable Development, specializing in Development Management Nenad received from the University of London, after attending Arizona State University and State University of New York. Entrepreneurship for Nenad is not much different than inspiration. Apart from his experience in the developing sector, Nenad also gained entrepreneurial experience also learned a lot about challenges of startups, about natural olive oil, exquisite Tuscan wines, the relationship between Rock and the classical guitar performance…

Presently acting as as a director of Institute of Molecular Genetics and Genetic Engineering, University of Belgrade and Head of the Laboratory for Laboratory for Molecular Microbiology. Research focus on fundamental research in the field of molecular microbiology and also on the application of biotech in food, feed, agriculture and pharmaceutical industry. Particularly expertise in reserch related to lactic acid bacteria and their probiotic potential and mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in different microorganisms. Published more than 50 papers in leading international journals in the field. From 2013 involved as Lecturer on Faculty of Pharmacy in doctoral study program Microbiology and Immunology. Actively involved in implementation of technology transfer and introduction and implementation of open innovation concept. Also, a coordinator and participant in numerous scientific national and international projects including those with the industry.

Filip Panjevic has been in the field of machine learning since his first summer internship in Microsoft in 2007. After graduating from ETF he joined Microsoft Serbia full time where he founded the Hardware Incubation Lab. During his 10 year tenure at Microsoft he had the opportunity to develop and ship groundbreaking products such as HoloLens and Windows Mixed Reality.

In 2015 he co-founded Petnica Machine Learning Summer School (PSIML), one of the premier machine learning summer schools in Europe, which has since graduated more than one hundred students.

Since 2018 he’s been the co-founder and CTO of YDRIVE, a startup company with the vision of solving the urban mobility problem using scalable AI.

Nikola Mrkšić is the CEO and Co-Founder of PolyAI, a London-based Conversational AI company. Before starting PolyAI, Nikola worked with the Apple Siri team in Cambridge, and he was the first engineer at VocalIQ, a dialogue systems startup acquired by Apple. He did a PhD at Cambridge, working with Professor Steve Young at the Dialogue Systems Group.

Milica Djuric-Jovicic is Acting Director of Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia. She has been Director of Innovation Centre at the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade since 2013. Her education background is in electrical engineering and computing from the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Serbia, where she received her BSc, MSc, and PhD degrees. She has 12 years of experience in research and innovation related to different fields of electrical engineering and data science. She is the author or co-author of 47 scientific publications, as well as a reviewer for international journals and research and innovation grants. Her research activities focus on eHealth, and design of new systems and devices which can contribute to better health system and quality of life.

Milica has been coordinator of national and international R&D projects, funded by grants, but also public or private companies. As the Director of the Innovation Centre, she has gained experience in leading and participating on numerous projects that combine academia and industry, and contribute to society through innovations, applied science and new technological solutions. The implemented projects included development of ICT and IoT technologies.

Vuk started his professional career in Nelt Co in 2003. He has over 15 years of experience in Supply Chain, Warehousing, Transport and Logistics management.

Vuk has been actively involved in various projects, such as: Logistics network design and optimization, Software integration and consultancy, Implementation of effective operational processes, Performance improvement projects etc.

As of January 2018, he holds the post of Nelt Group Manager of Operational Excellence Logistics, being responsible for the implementation of Logistics strategy and digital innovation in Nelt Logistics on West Balkans, supporting existing operations and the startup of new operations.

Expertise in Applied Economics in Agriculture and International Agricultural Development with special focus on digital technologies, based on 16+ years of practical experience.

Main professional focus in Precision Agriculture and Farming Business Development. Executive director and owner of one of the first companies in the Republic of Macedonia dealing with implementation of precision agriculture for large and small scale farming. Dedicated to change the existing traditional model of farming in the region.

Previous held position: Advisor to the Vice Prime Minister in-charge of Economic Affairs in the Government of the Republic of Macedonia focusing on issues in the area of Agricultural Economics.

Last academic achievement: Graduate Certificate in International Development with emphasis on Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University.

The development of the Digital Single Market (“DSM”) has significant implications for the EU’s external relations. David Ringrose coordinates the increasing number of policy and regulatory dialogues that DG CONNECT holds with partner countries & regions around the world. He also promotes the systematic integration of digital policies and tools into the EU’s external instruments and policies, from its development cooperation to enlargement, and from trade to the neighbourhood policy.

David was previously responsible for the communication strategy for the Digital Agenda and the launch of the Digital Single Market and prior to that, the EU’s evolving public diplomacy, as head of communication at the Commission’s External Relations department, DG RELEX.

Having joined the Commission on secondment from the UK Civil Service, David held a series of posts dealing with the former Soviet Union and then central Europe, both in Brussels and Prague, coordinating the EU communication strategy in the then candidate countries as they prepared to join the EU in 2004.

David is a graduate of the University of Kent at Canterbury, and the College of Europe in Bruges, and holds the Certificate d’Études Politiques from SciencesPo in Paris.

Tadej Slapnik is director at Tolar HashNET, Chairman of World Blockchain Hub, Co-Chair of High Level Group Blockchain for SDGs, Principal at European Blockchain Hub and Council member at Circular Change platform. He is a former State Secretary of the Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia, initiator and signatory of Feel the future declaration: Initiative Blockchain Europe, actively involved in promotion, development and smart regulation of social and circular economy, blockchain and distributed ledger technology for achieving Sustainable Development Goals at national, European and global level.

Nebojsa was born in Belgrade. He spent the first three years of high school in Fifth Belgrade Gymnasium, while he finished fourth grade in America. There he received a scholarship for Boston University where he graduated in biomedical engineering, with a thesis on improving the functioning of DNA chips. He received the first job in the company in the biotech industry, Phylos, where he worked on the development of protein chips. After a few years, he returned to Serbia where he first worked in IBM and then in Fujitsu Siemens Computers. At the time, he recognized that the notebook would be the next big thing in selling PCs, which gave FSC a long-term leadership position in our market in that segment. Thanks to that, Nebojsa became the first Country Manager, and then Fujitsu Regional Manager for the Balkans. During this period, he also received a master’s degree at the University of Belgrade, on the topic of international management and marketing. Prior to his arrival in Saga, he worked as General Manager of Printec, which is developing a solution for automating financial transactions.

Irena Cerovic joined UNDP in 2015 to manage a portfolio of projects on innovation, public administration reform, and rule of law. Her focus is on innovative uses of technology for democratization and development. Irena previously worked as Executive Director of the Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence, where she spent 10 years engaged on political dialogue and capacity building of decision-makers in Serbia and the Balkans, primarily as related to European Integration, democratic institution building, and regional reconciliation. She currently serves as Member of the Board of the Open Society Foundation in Serbia. Irena holds a Master’s degree in International Economic and Political Studies from Charles University in Prague.

Mrs. Dorina Cinari, is an Electronics Engineer graduated in 1993 from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Tirana. She has an MBA from University of New york NY Tirana and IUKB Switzerland. Mrs. Cinari has conducted prestigious training in the field of Good Governance of Natural Resources from Columbia University in NY, Global Energy and Sustainable Development from Houston University, Texas, and the International Leadership Program from the US State Department.

Mrs. Cinari is a Manager with long experience in energy and telecommunications and throughout her professional life has worked with the three sectors: the Private Sector, Government Sector as well as that of the Development Programs with International Institutions.

Mrs. Cinari covers the digital connectivity agenda with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy of Albania.

Anastas Mishev, PhD, Associate Professor, Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering at UKIM – obtained his PhD in Computer Science in 2009. The focus of his research is e-infrastructures for collaborative computing and research, primarily Grid and High-Performance Computing systems. His aim is to get these systems closer to all potential users, mainly the research communities, in order to fully use their enormous potential. He researched in the areas of computer architectures and networks, software engineering, Internet technologies and e-learning, and is co-author of over 80 scientific papers published in international journals and proceedings of conferences. He has participated in the implementation of over 50 international projects targeting the development of e-infrastructures, networking and their applications. He has been a collaborator with the National Research and Education Network-MARNET for many years and currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of MARNET. In his current engagement in the GEANT GN4_3 project, he is working on supporting the emerging NRENs in the Western Balkan region.

Mark Vasic, born 1974, is Senior Manager International Regulatory Affairs at Deutsche Telekom AG since September 2014. After being recruited, in 2001, he has worked for Deutsche Telekom in various management functions. In his current role, he is responsible for regulatory and public affairs in CEE and SEE countries. Mark Vasic is Co-Founder of the “Digital WB6+ Initiative” and different other multi stakeholder initiatives on digitization related topics.

Prior to his positions at Deutsche Telekom, he worked for the Lower Saxony Minister of Economic Affairs, for the Protestant Church and for a political foundation. The graduate political scientist conducted research in the countries of the Western Balkans and founded an IT startup.

Milan Sekuloski has over 15 years’ experience in project management, research and advisory on issues related to good governance in the security sector in the Western Balkans region, with particular focus on cybersecurity and strategic management capacity building.

Milan managed capacity building support programmes, worked on various strategic assessments and contributed to several national strategy drafting and review processes. Since 2011, Mr. Sekuloski serves as National Project Manager/Senior Adviser at The Geneva Centre for Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF). Since July 2018, he is working on the implementation of a UK FCO funded project ‘Enhancing Cybersecurity Governance in the Western Balkans’.

Prior to his engagement with DCAF, Milan has worked within the Armed Forces (Navy), Parliament, and with national and international governmental and non-governmental stakeholders (most notably the OSCE, International Security Information Service Europe, Swedish National Police and DCAF).

Milan holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Leeds, UK (Chevening Scholar 2005/2006), coupled with the university degree from the Military Academy of Serbia and Montenegro (2003).

Mike Michel has been appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Telenor Serbia, effective as of October 8, 2018. Before joining Telenor Serbia, Michel was Chief Marketing Officer of mobile operator Banglalink, Bangladesh. In his previous roles, he also served as Chief Marketing Officer in Telenor Hungary and Vice President for Brand in Telenor Group, Norway.

Michel has over 20 years of leadership experience in global telecommunication companies in CEE region, North America and Asia. He has worked in various senior leadership roles in Czech Republic, Serbia, Montenegro, and Hungary. He spent five years in Telenor Montenegro and Serbia, leading commercial business and teams.

Michel holds BA in Economics from Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada.

In his long-lasting career, Nebojša Vasiljević worked in various fields of software engineering, public administration, non-government organizations and university. He obtained his doctoral degree in the field of computational linguistics.

For seven years, he worked as an Assistant Minister within the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications, where he led the Sector for information society. From the founding of the Loop Foundation he works as its director.

Sasa Mrdovic is associate professor at Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Sarajevo. He teaches computer networks and security courses. He defended his Ph.D. thesis on intrusion detection systems at Department for Computing and Informatics, in 2009.

His main research interests include digital information security, digital forensics and next generation networks. Sasa published two books “Computer Systems Security” and “Practicum of Computer Systems Security” and a number of papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings. He has been reviewing papers for various journals and conferences.

Sasa Mrdovic also works on projects with industry and government in the area of information security. Important projects are Strategic framework for cyber security in B&H, Data security policy for B&H census, and PKI infrastructure project. He is an appointed expert witness for IKT. He holds CISSP (Certified Information System Security Professional) certificate.

Nikola Ljushev is the CEO of Makedonski Telekom. He has extensive experience in the telecommunication industry on top-level management positions in the Deutsche Telekom Group and in the Telekom Austria Group. Ljushev was CEO of Vip and Executive Director of one.Vip operator. He joins Deutsche Telekom Group as a CEO of Crnogorski Telekom. Mr. Ljushev holds BSc in Electrical Engineering in the area of electronics and telecommunications and additional education in corporate management from prestigious international schools and universities including the Harvard Business School, INSEAD, University of Chicago etc. The influential magazine Global Telecom Business – London awarded him as one of the top Forty-Under-Forty executive directors in the telecommunication segment worldwide, twice, in 2010 and 2011.

Professor Vladimir Trajkovik, PhD, is University professor at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, R.Macedonia. He has introduced or led lectures in: Algorithms and Data Structures, Distributed Computer Systems, Mobile Information Systems, Mobile and Web Services, Collaborative Computer Systems, New Media and Communications (at Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering , Innovative Technologies for Advanced Business Solutions (at Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies), Cyber Culture and Internet Based Communications (at Institute for Social, Political and Legal Research), Information & Communication Technological Foundation of e-Commerce (at Faculty of Economics).

He has published more than 150 research papers presented on International Conferences or published in International Journals in Computer Science and Informatics. He is author of 3 books and 10 book chapters published by international publishers.

He has participated in more than 50 international and national educational, research and applicative projects. He was coordinator of 20 national and international educational, research and applicative projects.

His research interests focus on: distance education systems, algorithm design, distributed environments, applications of wireless sensor networks, assisted living systems and connected health systems.

He was co-founder of 3 ICT companies, 2 NGO and partner at business accelerator.

He is winner of EU Commission WB ICT Idea Competition 2010, “ENTER (Enabling Collaborative Education Infrastructure)”. He was selected among 20 most influential people in ICT Industry in Macedonia by the GLOBUS magazine in 2010. He is member of the UNDP Social Innovation Roster, National Evridika Expert for Digital Education He was selected as best Scientist in University Ss. Cyril and Methodius for 2017.

Francesca is a leader with an excellent technical and business acumen and this combination has proved invaluable to Nokia and our Service Provider customers throughout her long and successful career.

As Head of 5G Sales e2e Europe, she is responsible to position Nokia 5G in Europe through consultative selling, to design the Go-to-Market strategy for the European players, to engage with many stakeholders to contribute to the creation of the 5G ecosystem.

Before this role, she created and led an international group called Operator Business Strategies, providing truly differentiating insights to CxOs on strategies around 4G / IoT / 5G, content monetization, analytics and digital service provider transformation to improve their business performance.

In 2012 she joined Marketing as South East Europe Customer Marketing Head, transforming the customer marketing role into a consultant function, motivating and inspiring other colleagues to go beyond their defined roles.

Francesca is an engineer and has more than 25 years of global experience ranging from ASIC design to System Engineering, from Product Management to Sales and Marketing.

She is Italian but is based in Munich, Germany, where she is passionate about expanding the human possibility of technology.

Milos Miletic has graduated and received his master’s degree in logistics from the Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering in Belgrade. After graduation he started working in Milsped as a Warehouse Analyst with a focus on optimization of warehouse processes and reporting. As a Sales Development & Logistics Project Solutions Analyst he was involved in different kinds of internal and external projects which include project management and calculations with cost-benefit analysis. At this moment Milos is working as a Manager of Tender & Project Department that allows him to manage and mentor a small team in activities related to tenders and projects in 3PL services.

Josif Kjosev, PhD, full professor in the field of electronics at the University “SS Cyril and Methodius” in Skopje, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies and member of the University Senate. Teaches: Microelectronics, Analog design, Sensors Conditioners and Data Acquisition Devices, Embedded Systems. Published more than 60 papers in the fields of Analog Circuits – switched capacitor converters, Data Acquisition Systems, and Embedded Systems. Cooperatates with industry in the fields of automation and electronic devices design, and recently IoT devices design. Also head of the Electronic Measurements Laboratory and the Electromagnetic Compatibility Division at the Faculty Inspection Body.

Darko Giljević, mag.ing.el., Nokia Networks: “Graduated at Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER) in Zagreb in 1998. Started business career at Pliva pharmaceutical company as engineer for computer networks. Moving to Siemens in 2000 as Project leader in mobile networks R&D. Since 2005 working with Customer operations for telecom operators. With Nokia Siemens Networks merger in 2008. working as Account Manager with responsibility for local and telecom clients in the region.

Transport and logistics expert with over 18 years of work experience in Transport and Logistics management, Consulting, Training and Education, Project management and Administration.

From year 2000, was working as a Head of two departments at Ministry of Transport of Republic of Serbia, Transport Manager at beverage production company, Logistics Manager at food production company, Consultant for business processes re-engineering, Trainer and professor at several educational institutions including present position as a Head of training Centre within Association for Transport of Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia.

Holder of several licenses and certificates including national and international trainings in Belgium, China, Japan and France, mostly in Transport and Logistics area but also in different areas of business administration and management.

Member of several professional bodies, expert working groups and professional organisations at national and international level, involved in Transport, Logistics and ITS policy creation, drafting regulations, strategies etc. Member or head of Serbian delegation at Joint Committee meetings on road transport with over 20 different countries.

Project manager and project team member at over 15 projects in area of Transport and Logistics funded by national, bilateral and EU programmes and sources, where one of the active projects is dedicated to digitalization in Transport and Logistics (AEOLIX at Horizon 2020).

Author or co-author of many works published on national and international conferences as well as review of several articles and books published in Serbia.

Nebojsa Jevtic was born on April 4th 1972 in Subotica, graduated as Master of Science at Road Transport Department of Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering of University of Belgrade. Married, father of two.

Damjan Damnjanovic was born in 1977 in Belgrade. Attended X Belgrade Gymnasium, graduated from the Faculty of Drama Arts at the Department of Film and TV Production. Master’s degree and Cum laude at multidisciplinary master’s studies at the University of “La Sapienza” faculty of Economics “State Management and Humanitarian Affairs” as a scholarship holder of the Italian Government and European Parliament. Dina’s father, producer, master of direct marketing, digital nomad, patient rights fighter, founder of the Blue Circle, ex-president and honorary member of Serbian patients’ associations, co-founder of Health Tech Lab and a man who tries to digitizes diabete …

Ivana Kostić is the Co-Founder of Health Tech Lab, created for making an impact in the local ecosystem after her initiation and organization of the 1st MIT Medical hackathon in Belgrade in partnership with MIT hacking medicine. She is also the Technology Transfer Associate at the Innovation Fund and MASHAV alumni.

Ivana earned her PhD degree from the MIT Portugal Program / Bioengineering Systems, where her work was coordinated between two labs, one in Portugal – -Biomaterials & Stem Cell-based Therapeutics Lab- and Karp Lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital together with Boston Children’s Hospital and MIT. These joint efforts were oriented towards developing minimally-invasive and more effective therapies for ischemic organs. The collaboration is still ongoing.

Her initial interest in this area was sparked by Physiology studies at the University of Belgrade and an additional rich practical knowledge gained through the IAESTE internship at UFV in Viçosa, Brazil in 2008 and the First BSRT Summer School of Regenerative Medicine in Berlin, 2009.

Successfully implementing the laws on: Trusted Services ; Electronic Documentation and Cyber security; Guaranteeing the security of trusted services, Also, it defines the minimum technical CIIs Operators of data security and computer network/systems of information society, in accordance to the international CIIs Operators, with the goal of creating a safe electronic environment.

Nemanja is Programme Director – Education at the Digital Serbia Initiative (DSI). This non-governmental non-profit organisation, currently gathering over 25 organisations and companies from various industry sectors, advocates digital transformation of Serbia. DSI views education as the key and uniting force that will ensure development of the society based on contemporary knowledge and skills.

Nemanja studied mathematics and painting. He was the Programme Co-ordinator at Belgrade Science Festival, author of an open-air permanent exhibition Science Park in Belgrade and creator of the Science Centre at the Museum of Science and Technology. He co-ordinated the Mathematics and International Programmes at Petnica Science Centre, worked as a Special Advisor at the Serbian Ministry of Education and led the work of the publicly funded Centre for the Promotion of Science. Prior to joining the Digital Serbia Initiative, Nemanja founded a legal tech startup that developed remote notarisation software.

Mihailo Vesovic was born on 3 May 1972, in Belgrade. He graduated from the Mechanical Engineering Faculty in Belgrade with MSc in Industrial Engineering.

He was a Secretary of the Association of Metal and Electric Power Industry in the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia (CCIS), then he was on the position of Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Economy and Privatization, and in the Ministry of Trade and Services. After that, he was a CCIS Vice President in charge of international economic relations, Director of the CCIS Centre for Innovations, and CCIS Deputy General Manager. Currently, he is an Adviser to CCIS President, in charge of issues relating to digital transformation of the economy.

He participated in the creation of the first Cluster Development Support Programme; he organized participation of Serbian companies in a large number of international fairs; he headed numerous international trade missions; he was Deputy Co-chair of the Serbia – Russia Joint Committee; he was President of the National Oil Committee Assembly; he participated in the implementation of a large number of international projects of the EU and World Bank; he is certified Mediator in business disputes; and he was a Coordinator in several Best of Serbia Campaigns.

Currently his main responsibility is development of the Centre for Digital Transformation. He is also involved in process of drafting a Strategy for Smart Specialization and Industrial Policy of Serbia. His mission is to bring closer business and scientific community through activities of the Council for Cooperation of Business and Science.

Born in 1973. (Doboj, B&H), received his PhD’s Degree in Engineering Science (Field: Organisation and Economics) at Džemal Bijedić University in Mostar, while MSc’s and Bachelor Degree in Technical and Engineering Sciences at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Zenica (B&H).

Mr. Alagić is fully working as Chief Executive Officer at Tešanj Development Agency. He was CEO at ARTECO Wood Technology Center and Advisor of director for technology and clusters at REZ RDA. Since 2005 to 2009 he was amongst others also responsible for strategic planning of project activities across the region Central BiH and implementation of measures towards increasing competitiveness of woodworking industry in B&H. He is currently part-time working as Assistant Professor and researcher at Faculty for Mechanical Engineering, the chair of CIM Technology and Industrial Engineering (University of Zenica, B&H) as well as lecturer at University of Eastern Sarajevo, Faculty of Traffic in Doboj. Mr. Alagić was co-mentor of several diploma thesis. Furthermore he is published more than 80 articles and projects at the national and international research & expert conferences. Above mentioned projects mostly performed in industrial conditions of automotive firms in BiH. In addition he is participated in four international projects financially supported by Government of Japan, JICA (2002) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy (2002-2003) Government of Switzerland (2007), and Government of China (2012) where he was responsible for Production management in the Eastern European countries and creation of a Mediterranean and Balkan network for SMEs as country coordinator, followed establishment of Wood Excellence Center in B&H and finally establishment and management of Development Areas. He is also member of The Institute for Standardization B&H, TC/35 Road vehicles and WG35/Standardization. He speaks fluently English.

Shpend Ahmeti was born on April 18, 1978, in Pristina.

He graduated in master studies in Public Policies at Harvard University, USA, during the years 2002-2004, specializing in Economic and Political Development.

He has completed university studies in Economics and Business Administration at the American University in Bulgaria, during the years 1996-2000, specializing in Applied Economics and Business Administration.

During the studies between the years 1999-2002, Mr. Ahmeti was senator and then the President of the Student Government at American University in Bulgaria, as well as leader of various communities (from more than ten countries) through the period of reforms at university. At the American Universities, involvement in the students’ government is the experience that combines knowledge, organization, confronting the protection of the rights and responsibility of faith from friends and colleagues.

Since 2005, Mr. Ahmeti is a lecturer of Public Policies and International Economic Policies at the American University in Kosovo (AUK).

Besides Albanian language (his mother tongue), he speaks English, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian and he also has knowledge German language.

He is the winner of several awards such as: World Bank Spot Award and European Debating Championships.

*This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence

Gordana Danilović Grković, ed. Director of Scientific and Technological Park Belgrade, is the winner of the Belgrade Winner – the leader of the year 2017, awarded by the PKS Chamber of Commerce in Belgrade.

Belgrade’s winners were presented last night to the best companies and individuals for the results achieved in the economy, development and contribution to the success of the Belgrade and Serbian economy in the previous year. The Belgrade winner has been awarded since 1985.

Ten year experience in the SMEs support, especially start up support and innovation, and eight year experience in the management of technology development projects – including long term research, development, innovation projects and transfer technology.

As the Mayor of Tirana since 2015, Erion Veliaj has focused on the implementation of child-friendly policies aimed at transforming Tirana into a long-term sustainable city.

As part of his vision of giving the city back to its citizens, his administration completely renovated the city’s central square, which was awarded the European Prize for Urban Public Space 2018, and created the Orbital Forest; a two-million tree belt that will serve as a pivotal element in addressing the environmental concerns of the city by 2030.

Siria Taurelli is leading the VET Governance strategic project at the ETF. In the ETF’s work, VET Governance applies to the legislative, institutional and financing arrangements of VET systems. She is coordinating an ETF study that aims to compare types and forms of public-private partnerships in the skills development domain, internationally and in Jordan, Kazakhstan, Serbia and Ukraine. Ms Taurelli has been working on lifelong learning with focus on continuing VET, skills for enterprise development, equity and human capital development thematic areas. She is experienced in project evaluation and impact assessment, and is author and contributor to a number of ETF publications on VET such as social partner engagement, country progress indicators and sector analyses.

Hille Henebry is Senior Project Manager at the Financial Sector and Economic Development Team for the South East Europe and Turkey Region of the KfW in Frankfurt.

Her work focuses on kick-starting KfW’s work on bilateral and regional Vocational and Education and Training projects in the Western Balkans. She has over 12 years of work experience in bilateral and multilateral development cooperation. Her sector experience includes private and financial sector development, education (higher and vocational education and training), and agricultural and rural development. She worked at the GIZ on and in various African countries, and at the World Bank Africa Region in Washington DC.

Valmir is born and grown in Prishtina, Kosovo. He has a bachelor degree in Entrepreneurship and Economy, and is currently enrolled in the Masters studies, with a mayor in Managing Information Systems. He has worked in the field of information Systems for many years, and his professional development has evolved through his engagement in NGO Lens, where he continues to coordinate different programs for three years now. Valmir, has been part of many regional projects, developing and coordinating programs in fields such as social entrepreneurship and social innovation, youth employment and inter-ethnic reconciliation. Nevertheless the aim of Lens is to use technology as tool to address community matters and contribute in the democratization processes, and the team continues to work enthusiastically in finding practical solutions in all fields of societal development. Lens, is an active NGO from Kosovo.

Juan Navas-Sabater is presently Lead ICT Specialist in the Brussels office of the World Bank, and member of the Transport and ICT Global Practice.

He is in charge of ICT operations in the Europe and Central Asia region, including those implemented with support of the European Commission, and working at the intersection between ICT and transport, as well as other sectors. Prior to this assignment, Juan was the World Bank’s Program Leader for Sustainable Development in the Russian Federation, based in Moscow. Before that, he was Lead ICT Policy Specialist in the ICT Sector Unit of the World Bank, based in Washington DC, where worked since joining the Bank in 1998.

Prior to the World Bank, in addition to broad experience in the private sector, he held a position at the State Secretariat for Telecommunications and Information Society, in Spain.

Juan holds a Master’s Degree in Telecommunications Policy, Economics, and Regulation, from The George Washington University and a degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the Madrid Polytechnical University. He speaks English, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, French and German.

Kosta is Managing Partner in ICT Hub and Managing Director at ICT Hub Venture. He has been leading ICT Hub since its establishment in November 2014, when it started as an incubator for technology startups. In three years, Kosta led ICT Hub to become one of the leading organizations in Serbia which support technology entrepreneurship and startups. ICT Hub Venture is the investment fund with the focus on investing in startups in an early stage of their development. Kosta is also a pioneer of connecting technology startups with corporations in Serbia, influencing local branches of multinational corporations such as Societe Generale bank, VIP Mobile, Ahold Delhaize to open their doors to co-operation with tech startups.

Armin is passionately involved in establishing the startup ecosystem and supporting entrepreneurship across all of Central and Eastern Europe, including the Western Balkans, Baltics, Russia and CiS. He is the co-founder of numerous activities and organization such as Startup.ba, the association for the promotion of entrepreneurship in Bosnia and Herzegovina, BalkanChangamakers and others. Also Armin published a 500-page report “Startup Investments and Innovation Ecosystem in Emerging Europe” featuring key players, investment data, insights and success stories of the entrepreneurial renaissance in 24 countries of the post-communist world. He is recognized as one of the leading experts on innovation and entrepreneurship in CEE.

Among other activities, Armin is currently working as a consultant for international organizations and investors interested in activities and investments in the region.

Milos Trkulja was born on October 16, 1967 in Belgrade. He had obtained his master’s degree at the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade and now he is finishing his doctoral dissertation in domain of digital globalization. In his career, he was on various executive management and marketing positions in sports organizations and associations, leading media companies, the Government of the Republic of Serbia and IT company Microsoft. Today he is the strategic development advisor for the largest private IT company in Bosnia and Herzegovina, LANACO from Banja Luka and lecturer at FEFA Faculty in Belgrade on master studies of Digital Transformation.

Irena is experienced professional in Finance, Talent and Corporate Law with over 16 years experience across USA and Europe. She is running the startup Next Billionaires Capital (FinTech), the Business Accelerator NewMan’s and takes selected speaking and mentoring engagements including guest lectures at Stanford University. She started her career as 19 years old in the Macedonian Army and the Cabinet of the President of Macedonia while studying to become a Lawyer.

After winning her Master degree in Business and Marketing from an UK University she fully entered the business sector and for 8 years was engaged at C-level positions in technology, software and financial corporations before launching her own businesses. 5 years ago Chaushevska founded the first Accelerator in the country and a Career Development Academy and became one of the initiators and drivers of the startup community in Central and Eastern Europe.

She was selected as Women Entrepreneurial Leader for 2014 by International Council for Small Business with HQ in Washington DC.

Irena is pursuing the Quantitative Methods in Finance Professional course at Stanford School of Engineering. Irena is Alumni of the Global Startups Program at Singularity University, Silicon Valley, USA and a U.S. Department of State German Marshall Fund 2017 YTILI Fellow.

She likes to bring together knowledge and experience from different but complementary areas in creating new products. When she was little she loved to build mechanical toys in her grandfather’s garage.

Irena also holds the licence for Silicon Valley and 12 cities in Central and Eastern Europe for the biggest competition in the world for space innovations “International Space Apps Challenge” organised by NASA (190 locations/2500+ teams/25000 participants/year) and for CNES/ESA’s “Act in Space” startups competition in USA.

Irena now splits her time between Los Angeles, San Francisco and Macedonia. Loves space, horse-back riding and flying sport airplanes.

Dr. Mirlinda Kracanaj graduated from the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Computer Science, where she completed her Master of Science and PhD in Informatics. Since October 2013 she is the General Director of the National Agency for Information Society (NAIS). Its research fields include digitalization, systems interconnection, centralized online services, issues and solutions for information infrastructure, electronic payment and electronic governance in Albania. Her work has been presented in a number of national and international conferences, as well as Albanian and foreign scientific journals.

Igor is a senior executive with extensive experience in scalable and distributed architectures and complex partner integrations with more than 15 years of experience in various domains of IT industry. He is currently an advisor and co-founder of Seven Bridges that he founded with Deniz Kural in late 2009. Prior to that, he was also serving a role of CTO of Seven Bridges and he was in charge of building the most sophisticated, distributed genomics analysis platform on the market and GM of Seven Bridges Belgrade office. Igor is, also, one of the founding members of Digital Serbia Initiative and a member of its Management Board.

Mrs. Sorensen holds a Master of Arts in Economics from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. She has completed her undergraduate studies in Economics at Western Washington University, in WA, USA. Over the past 8 years (2009 – 2017) she has managed a range of projects/ programmes in the field of employment promotion and skills development at the United Nations Development Programme.

Her professional work experience in development cooperation started in early 2007 with the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) in Dhaka, Bangladesh where she worked as an international consultant for the “Promotion of Social, Production and Environmental Standards in the Readymade Garments Sector” programme. During the period 2004-2006 she was a full time Lecturer of Economics at the University of New York, Tirana. In October 2017, Ms. Sorensen was appointed as the Deputy Minister of Finance and Economy, responsible for the Employment and Vocational Education and Training portfolio.

Although diversified, the professional career of Ms. Marta Arsovska-Tomovska has always been centered around innovation, the digital transformation of societies and building skills for the future. She is familiar both with the business culture and the culture of government.

Currently, she works as strategist/expert/consultant for digital transformation, innovation and business process improvement for domestic and international companies, institutions and governments, as well as the International Telecommunication Union (United Nations organization for ICT) on several regional projects. She is a co-founder of the Institute for Leadership, North Macedonian start-up in the field of consulting and education.

Arsovska-Tomovska is also a member of the Board of Directors and a member of the Grand Jury at the World Summit Awards (United Nations WSIS organization). She is certified by the United Nations as an international expert for the assessment and development of national digital innovation ecosystems. At the same time, Arsovska – Tomovska is appointed as special advisor of the Economic Chamber of North Macedonia for digital transformation.

Under her leadership, since her appointment in 2011 as Deputy Minister, and then in 2015 as Minister of Information Society and Public Administration, she created and implemented strategies for digitization, as well as for reforming the public administration in order to optimize the delivery of public services through ICT. At the same time, she promoted North Macedonia as an attractive ICT destination, promoted STEM education, and encouraged youth for careers in the field of ICT.

Prior to her appointment to executive positions in the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia, she had a 15-year career in the private sector. Leading renowned ICT companies, she participated in teams that worked on innovative projects in the field of Internet technology and developed the first North Macedonian website, the first e-commerce platform, the first solution for e-banking, the first WiMAX installation and many others. She launched the initiative “Culture of Internet Security”; Initiative for cooperation in the field of digital media between North Macedonia, USA, and Japan; Initiative for digital sister cities and many others. She took part in the most complex ICT projects and one-stop-shop systems in the public and private sector and collaborated with the world’s largest ICT brands on budget-funded and donor-funded projects of the World Bank, USAID, IPA etc.

As for her education, she is a graduate electrical engineer at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Skopje (current FEIT), and she is currently preparing a Master’s thesis at the Faculty of Economics. She also obtained a Leadership Certificate from Harvard University, the National Government School / Ministry of Defense of the United Kingdom and the Adizes Institution, diplomas on public management concepts from the UK Institute of Public Administration, the Italian National School of Administration, Scottish Parliament / NICO, project management – PMI, as well as professional certificates in the field of computer science.

Arsovska-Tomovska was a speaker and panelist at various high-level events organized by the United Nations, the International Telecommunication Union, the UNESCO, the OECD, the USAID, the Bled Strategic Forum, the Global Davos ICT Forum, the Open Government Partnership, the Mobile World Congress, NDI, Omidyar, NED, Google, The Atlantic, Boeing, Standford University and many others.

During her career, she was awarded for her merits and contribution to the development of the North Macedonian ICT sector by USAID, UN WSIS, ITU, World Customs Organization, British Council, National Council for Entrepreneurship and various associations for Internet technologies and for IT experts. In 2004, she was selected as Top 10 Manager of the Year by Capital magazine.

Since 2016 Labinot Carreti is the Head of Global Sales of Veridos GmbH. Since 2012, Labinot Carreti has held various management positions in sales at G+D Government Solutions until his last position as Head of Sales Europe & Northern Africa for Veridos GmbH. Previously, he gained experience at the international consulting firm Pohl Consulting & Associates as Head of Business Development and at the Council of Europe as International Projects Coordinator. Labinot Carreti has more than 16 years of experience with government projects, high expertise in the modernization of institutional functioning and has realized successful projects for key international institutions, such as the European Union and the World Bank. His project experience embraces the coordination of global government national ID programs and leading a team with global presence. Labinot Carreti graduated in International Business and Finance (Master’s Degree) and in Institutional Economics (Master’s Degree) within the top universities in Paris.

Vladimir Nikolic has been the Programme Assistant at Regional School of Public Administration (ReSPA) since 2015. He also worked 3 years on the European Union financed project related to ReSPA institutional capacity building and quality of public service. As a Programme Assistant at ReSPA, he supported and contributed to the exchange of experience within thematic areas of Centre of Government, Better Regulation and eGovernment. Mr Nikolic’s previous professional experience includes work within the local self-government in Montenegro and more than 5 years in CSOs. He holds a Diploma from Academy of Diplomacy and Security, Belgrade, Serbia.

Slaven Bukarica has been a Programme Assistant at ReSPA since 2017. Previously, Slaven has nine years of experience as a Manager in event management in supervising, developing and directing a range of conferences, events and training programmes. As a Programme Assistant at ReSPA, he supported and contributed to the exchange of experience within thematic areas of Quality Management and e-Government. Furthermore, he works as a Quality Management Assistant within BACID II project with the aim to strengthen Governance and Public Administration Reform and support European Integration through the implementation of Common Assessment Framework (CAF) at the regional level. Slaven holds a Diploma of Faculty of Philology, English language and Literature, Niksic, Montenegro.

Jelena Miletic has over 10-year experience in project and policy cycle management, with specialisation in impact assessment, M&E of programmes and projects in public administration reform sector, including service delivery. She also has extensive knowledge of EU-funded programmes, extensive knowledge of IPA II financial assistance and programming in Serbia and the region. Jelena has a comprehensive experience in strategic planning and management proven through developing strategies and corresponding action plans for state ministries and local authorities in Serbia. So far, she conducted various analysis and studies in public administration issues, including the regional ReSPA study on public service delivery for Serbia and Montenegro, covering the e-government and digitalization of services. Jelena has a solid track record in moderating and facilitating various training events, panel discussions and conferences.

Furthermore, she has experience in working as a consultant on various PAR related international projects, some of the most relevant being the engagement on the EU PPF5 Senior Expert for PAR and Justice Sectors, UNDP Functional Review/Public Administration Specialist, and others (SIDA, GIZ, SIPU, USAID, etc.).

Solza Kovachevska is State Advisor for Information Systems and Technologies – Ministry of Information of North Macedonia. Previously worked in ICT, personal data protection, risk management, business continuity and information security in the private insurance sector. Chevening/Cranfield University cybersecurity fellow 2018/2019.

She specializes in drafting horizontal law and policy that focuses on electronic identification, trust services, and network and information security. Part of the core team that created the first National Cybersecurity Strategy and Action Plan of the Republic of North Macedonia in 2018, she is now engaged in its implementation. With her main interests being privacy, freedom of information, and information security, she is working to build up the security of government and citizen data systems, with a particular emphasis on Critical Information Infrastructure protection.

Haris Ceremida, is CEO and Co-founder of company Verso in Bosnia and Hercegovina, with more than 15 years of experience in IT industry working for international companies in the telecom sector. In 2010 he started Verso office in Sarajevo, as a regional group member of Verso Altima Group. Verso is regional networking powerhouse, encompassing technological, organisational, business and commercial knowledge and expertise with the provisioning of products and services needed by companies transitioning into networked economy. Haris has recently been concentrated to exploring possibilities for building next generation networks and IoT platforms which would enable digital transformation of the overall society in Bosnia and Herzegovina through usage of cloud, big data, AI and smart IoT solutions.

Miles is principal lecturer in Computing Education at the University of Roehampton. Prior to joining Roehampton, he spent 18 years in four schools, much of the time as an ICT coordinator and most recently as a head teacher. He is a board member of Computing At School, the BCS Academy of Computing and the CSTA. He is a fellow of the BCS, RSA, HEA and Chartered College of Teaching, and a member of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

Over the years he has contributed to a number of computing related projects including the national curriculum computing programmes of study, Switched on Computing, Barefoot Computing, QuickStart Computing, CAS TV, Project Quantum, Hello World and the National Centre for Computing Education.

He gives regular keynotes and CPD workshops on computing and education technology in the UK and abroad and has worked on a number of international consultancy projects involving technology enhanced learning, curriculum development and CPD.

Thomas Prorok is the Deputy Managing Director of the Austrian KDZ, Centre for Public Administration Research. He has been working in the fields of public administration reform, decentralisation and local governments as well as EU integration for more than 15 years. Thomas is the Head of the Austrian CAF-Center, which is the European framework for quality management in the public sector. He has also held the position of programme manager of LOGON – the Local Governments Network for EU integration.

He studied European Law and holds a master’s degree in political science from the University of Vienna. He is the editor of manifold publications on local government, quality management and European integration, including the LOGON Report ‘Impact of the European Union on Local Authorities’.

Emanuele Baldacci is currently Director of Digital Services at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Informatics. From May 2015 to February 2018 he was the Director of Methodology, IT and Corporate Statistical Services at Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. From October 2011 to April 2015 he was the Head of the Integration, Quality and Research Department of the Italian Statistical Office. Before that, he was a deputy division chief at the International Monetary Fund, a senior economist at the World Bank and also served as chief economist at SACE, Italy’s largest trade finance group. He has a PhD in Demography from the Universities of Rome, Florence and Padua; he is the author of several scientific publications on fiscal sustainability, macroeconomic risk in advanced and emerging economies, population ageing and social protection and official statistics modernisation.

Zoja is Programme Director for Startup Ecosystem in the Digital Serbia Initiative, private non-profit gathering more than 25 companies and organisations, working on and advocating for successful transformation of Serbia into a digital society.

Zoja co-founded Startit, organisation that runs eight hubs across Serbia and an online tech media, reaching more than 70.000 people every month. Zoja obtained a Bachelor and Masters degree at Faculty of Economics, University of Belgrade. She also teaches entrepreneurship at FEFA Faculty at University Metropolitan. She is active in empowering women in the tech sector and has co-founded the local branch of Lean In, the world’s largest female empowerment movement.

At the Open Contracting Partnership, Karolis works to demonstrate the positive impact of opening up contracting data worldwide. He contributes to the creation of tools and methodologies for evaluating change propelled by open contracting. Before joining the Open Contracting Partnership, Karolis worked with Transparency International Lithuania, focusing on citizen engagement using ICT. He also contributed to global open data advocacy efforts, together with the Epsi platform, Open Knowledge International, Open Data Institute and others. From 2014 to 2016, he was a national researcher within the Open Government Partnership Independent Review Mechanism.

Johan Hesse is the Managing Director of of secunet’s international subsidiary. In this role he has developed and expanded the company’s business activities into Europe and abroad. With his experience of 20 years in the international cybersecurity market he coordinates and develops secunet’s global business strategy. Due to secunet’s specific portfolio he has a profound knowledge in the area of high-assurance crypto devices.

Within his career, Johan was always active in developing and pushing forward projects for major government organisations and authorities. Particulary complex projects in multinational environment as the European or NATO organisations have been successfully implemented by Johan and his team over last years.

Johan holds a degree in Mathematics (Diploma of the University of Hamburg) which, together with his expertise in Economics, enables him to understand and address the special demands of international customers in cybersecurity.

Gavin Hayman, Executive Director Gavin Hayman is Executive Director of the Open Contracting Partnership. Prior, Gavin was Executive Director and Director of Campaigns of Global Witness. He oversaw the groundbreaking and award-winning investigative, campaigning and advocacy work uncovering secret deals, corruption and conflict around the world at Global Witness. He helped create the international Publish What You Pay campaign and helped negotiate the intergovernmental Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative that brings together oil and mining companies, home- and host-governments and civil society to improve disclosure and oversight of over $1 trillion dollars of oil and mining money. He is an expert on illicit financial flows, and helped lead global efforts to end the abuse of anonymous shell companies for money laundering and financial crime, including working with the British government’s recent presidency of the G8 and the Open Government Partnership. He has a Doctorate from the University of Reading and has worked with Chatham House in London and the United National Environmental Programme in the past on analysing and investigating global environmental crime.

Eliza Niewiadomska, Senior Counsel in the Legal Transition Programme of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London, United Kingdom is responsible for public procurement, digital transformation and open government policy advice and technical cooperation with governments in the EBRD region. Eliza holds postgraduate degrees in law, economics and procurement policy from the Warsaw University in Poland and the University College London and King’s College in the United Kingdom. Eliza worked for Polish government during transformative years preparing Poland’s accession to the European Union and upon leaving the civil service, as a general counsel in the IT industry. Prior to joining the EBRD in 2009, Eliza was head of procurement at the power & energy company, PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna SA in Warsaw.

Marija Kujacic is a Senior Adviser for e-Government and Open Data at the Office of Information Technology and e-Government. She has been working on the development of e-Government in Serbia for more than 10 years. She worked in policy setting and implementation; led a project for the implementation of the central e-Government Portal, implementing a user-oriented approach and infrastructure as electronic identity and electronic signature, electronic payment, and interoperability platform. Involved in preparation European e-Government annual benchmark, as well as for UN E-Government Survey. She was one of the initiators of the open data initiative in Serbia and actively participated in a project Open Data Open Opportunities that the Office runs with UNDP, with the support of the World Bank, the Government of Great Britain and the Swedish International Development Agency. Member of the Task Force for preparation of the Action Plan for Open Government Partnership.

Born on March 1st 1978 in Skopje, where he finished his primary and secondary school with excelent grades. Durring his education he attended and achived great results on many high school competitions, among which his best achievements were 1st place on the State competition in informatics in 1996, and attendance on the 8th International Olympiad in Informatics and 4th Balcan Olympiad in Informatics. Meanwhile he has successfully attended English courses and received the First Cambridge Certificate (FCE) in English. In 1996 he started his undergraduate studies in Informatics at the Faculty of Natural Scences and Mathematics, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, where he graduated in 2000 as the best student at the Faculty with average score 9.91 (out of 10). Durring his undergraduate studies he received many honorable mentions for attending the ACM collegiate programming contests, where he was a member of the team that in 1999 was second in the region and attended the Finals of the 24th ACM international collegiate programming contests, that was held in 2000 in Orlando, Florida. After his third year of studies, he was an intern for three months in Philish Laboratories in Eindhoven, Holland, where he worked on coding thechniques for multicast protocols. From October 2000 until March 2001 he wored as an assocciate at the Institute of Informatics at Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, and then he was elected as a junior assistant. Durring 2001 he started his graduate studies in informatics at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, where he finished them in 2004 withe the defence of the master thesis “Communications in Grids”, undre the supervision of Prof. d-r Marjan Gushev. In 2010, with the public defence of doctoral dissertation under the title “Modelling and verification of Grid workflows” under the supervision of Prof. d-r Smile Markovski he received PhD in Informatics, and afterwards he was elected as Assistant Professor in 2011. He has been teaching the following courses: Distributed Operating Systems, System Software, Introduction to IT, Introduction to Software Engineering, Software Construction. During he was assistant he gave tutorials for the following courses: Introduction to informatics 1, Introduction to informatics 2, Finite mathematics, Numerical programming, Programming languages, Computer architectures, Algorithms and automata, Data structures, Formal languages and automata, Operating systems, Parallel and distributed processing, Distributed operating systems, Theory of programming and System software. He is a coordinator for Macedonia for the International FP7 project “European Grid Initiative – Integrated Sustainable Pan-European Infrastructure for Researchers in Europe ”. He was active participant in 15 international projects in the field of informatics and developing curricula in informatics. He has had significant contribution to the SEE-GRID, SEE-GRID-2 and SEE-GRID-SCI international projects as the Grid Infrastructure Manager for Macedonia. He has participated in 20 workshops as lecturer and has visited more than 10 universities and summer schools. His scientific fields of interest are: Grid computing, High-performance computing, Parallel and distributed processing, Genetic algorithms. He has published 18 papers in international conferences and 1 paper in international journal with impact factor.

Mr. Medcraft has extensive experience working on financial markets and services issues, both from an industry and policy perspective. The first part of his career was spent in the private sector (30 years), with accounting firm KPMG then Société Générale in Australia, Asia, Europe and the Americas and then as CEO of the industry group, the Australian Securitisation Forum. At Société Générale, he initially worked on corporate finance, then capital markets, structured finance, project finance and funds management, before becoming Deputy Global Head of Financial Engineering and then Managing Director and Global Head of Securitisation. When he was based in New York, Mr. Medcraft co-founded the industry group, the American Securitization Forum, and was its Chairman for a number of years.

From 2009 to 2017, he was first Commissioner and then Chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), Australia’s corporate, markets, financial services and credit regulator. While ASIC Chairman, Mr. Medcraft was also, for three years until May 2016, Chair of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) Board and a member of the Financial Stability Board. IOSCO is the leading international policy forum and global standard setter for securities regulation.

Other earlier appointments include director of the Washington-based think tank Salzburg Global Seminar, member of the IMF High-Level Advisory Group of the Interdepartmental Working Group on Finance and Technology, a global steward of the World Economic Forum’s initiative on long term investing infrastructure, member of the Board of Directors of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. Mr. Medcraft has also held elected public office, including the mayorship of cities in Melbourne and Sydney.

Mr. Medcraft, an Australian national, holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne and is a qualified Chartered Accountant.

Sandra Pernar works as Senior Regional Coordinator in Open Government Partnership (OGP). She provides guidance and assistance to governments in Europe, primarily in Southern and Eastern Europe, facilities exchange and learning between governments, as well as support to civil society organizations in these countries to push for open government reforms. Prior to joining OGP, Sandra has worked as Senior Advisor in the Croatian Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs. She is a long-standing champion of open government and a stalwart supporter of OGP both within her native Croatia and beyond – she has served as OGP Point of Contact for Croatia, on OGP Steering Committee and was a member of inaugural Board of Directors of the OGP Secretariat. She was also the President of the Academy for Political Development, Croatian organization which primarily provides political education and networking for young leaders in politics, business, public administration, civil society and media. Before all of that, she was the Executive Director of GONG, a leading Croatian anti-corruption, FOI and good governance NGO. Sandra also regularly provides expert support across European and Asian countries, directly or through OSCE, on various issues related to open government.

She holds a BA in political science from University of Zagreb, Faculty of Political Science.

Gordana Gapikj Dimitrovska is State advisor for administration in the Ministry of Information Society and Administration responsible for modernization of public administration and democratic governance, open government, policy development and regulatory impact assessment. Prior to joining the Ministry, she was responsible for coordination and monitoring of Public Administration Reform in the Government the Republic of North Macedonia as Head of PAR Unit.

Ms Gapikj Dimitrovska specialized in processes such as modernization of public administration and democratic governance, open government, policy development, regulatory impact assessment, reducing administrative barriers, public consultation including e-democracy and e-governance. She is a vice president in the Council for Cooperation with and Development of the Civil Sector (advisory body of the Government for the promotion of the cooperation, dialogue and encouraging the development of the civil society sector in the Republic of North Macedonia and coordinator of the priority area Policy-making and Coordination of the PAR Strategy 2018 – 2022.

From June 2015 she is National Coordinator for Open Government Partnership (OGP) and leads the development and implementation Macedonian National OGP Action Plans. Also she is representative in the Council of Europe Committee on Democracy and governance, Subcommittee on Economic and financial issues and Statistics and Subcommittee on Trade, Industry, Customs and Taxation- Stabilisation and Association Committee-EU. Ms Gapikj Dimitrovska has Bachelor’s degree in administrative law form the Faculty of Law -University ” Ss. Cyril and Metodius”, Skopje, North Macedonia and earned her Bar exam.

Nives Sandri, born in 1969 in Zagreb, Croatia. Graduated in 1992., with Master of sciences in field of technical science, electrical engineering, telecommunication and computer science degree at Faculty of Electrical engineering and Computing in Zagreb, Croatia on topic of “Orientation in Telecommunication and computer science”. Having working experience in Telecommunications field since 1992, when started professional career at “Croatian Post and Telecommunications” as Electrical engineer with assignments in maintenance of telecommunication systems with major responsibilities of ensuring quality of work system.

In 1995 her professional career continued in Siemens d.d., Croatia in Communications sector, where her professional career gradually developed along with transformation of mentioned Siemens’s Com sector which became currently known as Nokia. Throughout this period, she obtained positions of Account Manager in Sales, Head of Sales in Communication and IT department, Director of Communications and IT Sector, Country Director / Board member of Nokia Affiliate in Croatia and Macedonia already for 10 years along being Deutsche Telekom Customer Business Team for South Europe in period 2013-2018.

With 1.1.2018. Nives Sandri has been appointed, along with Board member of Nokia Affiliate in Croatia and Macedonia, as Deutsche Telekom Customer Team Head for Central Europe within Nokia company being responsible for business in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Hungary and Austria.

Valdrin Lluka is a Minster of Economic Development in Kosovo*.

Valdrin Lluka is a results-driven executive and entrepreneur with more than 12 years of experience in private sector development, management, management consulting and leadership development. He holds an MBA degree from the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management and BA degree in Economics and Information Systems from the American University in Bulgaria.

During his professional experience, Lluka demonstrated ability to develop, implement, and oversee innovative promotional activities to attract foreign investment into Kosovo* and promote local products abroad through the Kosovo* Investment and Enterprise Support Agency, a Government Agency under the Ministry of Trade and Industry where he served for 4 years as the General Director. Lluka led the National Council of Economic Zones as appointed by the Cabinet of the Government of Kosovo* and served at several economic development boards in and outside of Kosovo*.

He has extensive experience with brand building, both in-company and country level, and strong analytical, communication, presentation, and organizational skills, mainly gained through several trainings and management consulting projects in the US and in Kosovo*.

Lluka now leads a chain of production facilities on fresh and processed food products, employing more than 200 employees and exporting 100% of its production to the European Union markets. In addition, Lluka lectures the course of Entrepreneurship at Universum College in Prishtina, combining his experience and the latest entrepreneurship know-how from the contemporary literatures.

He also volunteers as the co-chair of the Kosovo* American Education Fund (KAEF) Committee. KAEF is dedicated to the long-term economic development of Kosovo* through the education of its people. KAEF provides up to 8 graduate fellowships per year to promising Kosovars* for top-level master’s degree at select U.S. universities.

*This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.

Over 15 years of professional experience in the field of electronic communications and media regulation, monitoring and benchmarking regulatory practices at the EU and national level.

Responsible for developing Cullen International’s regulatory training portfolio and has been actively engaged in capacity building initiatives for policymakers and regulators across a wide range of countries.

Contributed as one of the lead authors for a study for the European Commission “Substantive issues of review in the areas of market entry, management of scarce resources and general consumer issues” (SMART 2015/0003).

Director for the European Commission projects “Supply of services in monitoring regulatory and market developments for electronic communications and information society services in Enlargement countries”, SMART 2010/009 (2011– 2014) and SMART 2007/0006 (2008 – 2011) covering Turkey and Western Balkan countries, organising regular industry fora on the application of the European best practices for key stakeholders in the region.

Before joining Cullen International in 2002, Veronica worked for Ericsson business consulting practice in Stockholm.

Vasko Kronevski, B.Sc. Degree in Information Technology, has been developing his expertise in digital transformation and ICT business since 1996.

He has been General Manager at several different software development companies, and is currently CEO and co-founder of Nextsense.

Vasko’s carrier development encounters more than 25 years of professional experience in driving digital transformation processes for prominent enterprises in telecom and finance industry, as well as governmental institutions across Europe and wider. His expertise in envisioning complex ICT solutions for public or government institutions and agencies, has placed Nextsense as a leading company for e-Parliament and e-Government solutions worldwide. Being at the forefront of technology and innovation, he has been engaged as an expert in a number of EU projects for digital transformation, including implementation of eID.

Vasko’s strategic vision and vast experience in driving solutions with digital signing components, combined with his commitment to guide companies through digital transformation process, positioned him as an expert for secure, trusted and fully compliant digital signing solutions. His vision and dedication to technology driven services has brought Nextsense many international awards, among which Microsoft Partner of the Year. Under his strategic leadership, Nextsense has become a recognizable partner of trust in the SEE region and wider, a company with vision and know-how in generating value for growth for it’s clients.

As a strategist, strong analyst and mediator, Vasko has been a member (past and present) in many distinguished professional bodies: World Information Technology and Service Alliance: Member of Board of WITSA; WITSAGlobal IT Excellence Award 2006 Committee Member; MASIT – North Macedonian ICT Chamber of Commerce, Chairman of the Assembly, President of the Board; Vice President; Steering Committee Coordinator; South East Europe ICT Forum, Private sector board – member of the Board; Member of EBA-European Business Association; EE e-Democracy Conference – Chairman of the organizing board.

Loretta is a highly dynamic, skilled banking, financial and consulting professional with over 25 years in financial markets and related sectors. She has a worked for major investment banks at Board, MD or senior management level throughout Asia and India including, RBS (India), Macquarie Group (India), Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and Elara Capital (India), Spanning a long career, Loretta has tremendous exposure to global financial markets, multiple asset classes and emerging market environments. Loretta has advised many international banks, global hedge and pension funds on managing portfolio and exposure to derivatives and related products. For the last decade, she has been paramount in successful transaction facilitation for Foreign Investors in India and other emerging markets. She has operated in many multi-cultural organisations.

Loretta sits on the advisory board of UWS (Business School), Blume Ventures (India).An adjunct fellow at UWS (Austrian life time fellow of the advisory board of ADDCA (Australian Digital Currency and Commerce Association) and holds various advisory positions for multiple tech, biotech and Cybersecurity companies . Loretta champions the cause for responsible blockchain adoption with global governments , regulators and industry players .

She was the recipient of the Fintech Australia, “FinTech Leader of 2017”, “Female leader of 2016” and Sancta Sophia College (Within Sydney University) Alumni Award 2016 for Social impact.

Ivan has been a part of Tech Industry since he was 19 years old, either as a System Engineer, Tech Executive or a company Founder. For six years, he helped build Devana Technologies, whose Manage WP software was acquired by GoDaddy, the world’s number one domain registrar, and one of the biggest hosting companies in the world. Ivan co-founded MVP Workshop, specialized in both consultancy and R&D related to emerging Blockchain technologies.

With his team, Ivan is currently working on a number of projects that are implementing Blockchain solutions in a wide range of industries.

In March 2018, MVP Workshop successfully executed Celsius Networks’ ICO which raised $50 Million. As an Advisory Board Member at Celsius Network, Ivan is working together with his team on a Blockchain powered lending and borrowing platform that aims to replace big banks and futures exchanges, like the CME and CBOT, with crypto coin holders who will earn returns through lending.

Ivan is also working on making Serbia a top Blockchain project destination. He is the Co-founder and the President of Serbian Blockchain Initiative (SBI) – the industry network for businesses implementing Blockchain solutions. Along with other SBI members, he is helping to understand the Blockchain technology potential, share best practice and engage with government and regulatory stakeholders.

With a long and successful entrepreneurship history, Ivan is also a startup mentor at Founder Institute, StartIT Startup Academy, ICT Hub and EKOF Startup Centar.

Mergim Cahani is Founder and CEO of Gjirafa Inc, the fastest growing tech company in the Balkans, and a StartupYard 2014 Alum. Mergim studied computer science at St. John’s University and New York University, completing both a masters in CS and an MBA. He taught computer science at St. Johns as an adjunct professor, and served as Director of the Computer Science program at the University of Prizren.

He founded Gjirafa, originally an Albanian language search engine, in 2013. Since then, Gjirafa has grown to nearly 100 employees, with offices in Albania and Kosovo*, and is the top online ad network in Kosovo*, Albania and North Macedonia, and it offers a wide range of services including search, business listings, video streaming, and even vacation home rentals. Gjirafa introduced the E-commerce platform Gjirafa50 in 2016, quickly becoming a major provider of e-commerce in the region.

Mergim is also President of the Board of Governors at the American Chamber of Commerce in Kosovo*.

*This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.

Born in1972, mechanical engineer, father of two. From 2001 to 2007 worked at the Dunav Insurance company – motor vehicles, credit, transport insurance and reinsurance. At March 2007 joined Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Serbia, the Association of Banking, Insurance and other Financial institutions.

Writes articles and research papers, giving lectures and participates in expert meetings on insurance, finance, organization and related fields, both in Serbia and in the region, member of working groups with government bodies, participant in making of draft regulations. Main areas of interest: innovation in financial services, fraud prevention, improvement of regulatory framework, EU association process, facilitating access to a wider scope of financial services.

Valentina Taseva is an established entrepreneur with over 22 years of experience founding and managing IT training and certification companies in Southeast Europe. She is the CEO and co-owner of Semos Education Macedonia and Serbia, a renowned ICT training center, and ClearView, a management training center, as well as co-owner of Certiadria, a certification center for ICT skills certifications in 12 countries regionally. Manpower count in this companies is over 140.

Personal Awards:

• Award: One of the Top 10 Women Managers in in Republic of Macedonia in 2004 year.
• European Bank for Reconstruction and Development: First place – Women in Business Award for Special Achievements in Industry for 2011
• Best Promoter of Macedonia for 2011
• 20 years jubilee in business – Women manager in Republic of Macedonia 2016

Arta Shehu Zaimi is the co-founder of Labbox and jCoders Academy. Both of her startups are focused in solving the problem of the quality of education, using technology. jCoders Academy offers a learning environment for coding and robotics that promotes equitable and lifelong learning and inspires a changemaker attitude starting from ages 8 to 18. Today jCoders has 5 centres in Kosovo* with around 800+ students. jCoders offers a supplementary curriculum that will enable schools to integrate and teach technology in their classrooms.

The experience in jCoders, led Arta and the team in developing a hardware solution to use while teaching electronics and programing. Labbox proved to improve the learning curve and increase experimentation for teachers and students as well. Her experience consists of 9 years in development and software architecture, with 4 years in education. She pioneered in offering the possibility to teach kids ages 8+ STEM in Kosovo* and was awarded numerous honors of success during her working career, including the Gold Medal from the Western Balkans Summit held in London this year. Arta is committed in contributing to the improvement of education in Kosovo* and the region as she strongly believes that the quality of our education is a critical aspect in individual and collective success.

*This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.

Suzana Pribilovic was born in Cetinje in 1972.

She has worked in the Secretariat for Parliamentary Affairs, the Secretariat for Economy and Finance, and the Office of the Mayor of Budva. She has also held positions as Vice President of the Municipality of Budva, judge of the Basic Court in Kotor and President of the State Commission for Control of Public Procurement.

Jovan Despotovski is a graduated economist at the Faculty of Economics at the University “St. Cyril and Methodius” and a postgraduate in international relations and diplomacy at the University “American College” – Skopje. He has an extensive experience in the field of strategic planning and coordination of capacity building programs financed by the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia and foreign donors.

As head of the Sector in the Secretariat for European Affairs of the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia, he participated in the realization of the significant projects: the realization of Corridor X, the cooperation with international financial institutions, program coordinator of the Office for National Aid, led the working group for the compilation of the Questionnaire of the EC for the application of the Republic of North Macedonia for EU membership in the field of economy, which gives North Macedonia the status of an EU member state. He is a co-founder of Mensa.

Nebojsa is a high-impact executive and serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of global experience in electronic payments and fintech. His bold vision coupled with laser focus on execution took him from founding and building five start-ups (Canada, Netherlands and the US), to driving innovation as CTO of an Australian public company with operations on four continents (Asia, Australia, Europe and North America), to working with Payments Canada on modernization of the core payment systems infrastructure that clears and settles over $200 billion every business day.

At Digital Serbia Initiative, Nebojsa is leading the team working with more than 25 member-companies to create a business environment that serves the Serbian digital ecosystem as a whole. In the strategic effort to transform Serbia into a digital society, this independent and non-profit organisation engages with all relevant players including startups at different stages, corporates, the Government, educational institutions, media, various types of support organisations, influential individuals and broader public.

Nebojsa holds a Master’s Degree in electrical engineering from the University of Belgrade.

From 2002 until 2005 she was Head of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and President of the Coordination Center for Kosovo and Metohija.

From 2005 until 2007 she was appointed Director of the Coordination Body for the Municipalities of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja.

From 2007 until 2012 she served as Secretary of the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs.

From July 2012 until April 2014 she served as State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign and Internal Trade and Telecommunications, and since May 2014, she has been appointed State Secretary of the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications.

Since March 2015 she has been a member of a Commission of the Republic of Serbia for cooperation with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – UNESCO in the field of information technology and the information society.

Since June 2015 she has been the Head of the Working group for defining the national broadband network. She has been engaged in the Coordination Body for the EU Accession Process, Chapters 3 and 10, since September 2015, as president of the negotiating groups – Right of Establishment & Freedom to Provide Services and Information Society and Media.

Since January 2016, she has been a member of European Digital Single Market Strategic Group, and since March she has been the coordinator of the Economic Reform Program – ERP 2016-2018. She is head of Body for coordinating of activities in information security formed by the Serbian Government.

Steve Purser was born in the UK and attended the universities of Bristol and East Anglia where he obtained a BSc. in Chemistry and a PhD in Chemical Physics respectively. He started work in 1985 in the area of software development, subsequently progressing to project management and consultancy roles. From 1993 to 2008, he occupied the role of Information Security Manager for a number of companies in the financial sector. He joined ENISA in December 2008 as Head of the Technical Department and is currently responsible for all operational activities of ENISA.

Steve is currently a member of several Steering Boards and Advisory Committees, including notably the Steering Board of the CERT EU and the Programme Board of the EU Cyber Crime Centre. In the area of standards, he is the ENISA representative on the ISO SC 27 working group. As Head of the Core Operations Department, he regularly represents ENISA in international conferences on information security.

He was a co-founder of the ‘Club de Securité des Systèmes Informatiques au Luxembourg’ (CLUSSIL) and has frequently published articles in the specialised press. He is also the author of ‘A Practical Guide to Managing Information Security’ (Artech House, 2004).

Irini S. Reljin received the B.Sc., M.Sc. and the Ph.D. degrees from the University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia, all at the School of Electrical Engineering, major Telecommunications, where she is a full professor. She is a Senior Member of the IEEE, member of the SMPTE (Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers), BSUAE (Trans Black Sea Union of Applied Electromagnetism), and member of national telecommunications societies. Her main interest is in the field of telecommunications and signal/image/video processing, telemedicine, including the use of fractal and multifractal analysis. She has authored several textbooks and book chapters, more than 350 papers with high citation rate in the respectable journals, books and patents. She has been lead guest editor for special issue of Wiley Hindawi scientific journal Complexity, devoted to New Methods for Analyzing Complex Biomedical Systems and Signals. She held a number of invited lectures at several universities and many international conferences. I. Reljin participated and leaded a number of national and international projects in the field of multimedia, image and video signal processing and telemedicine. She has been responsible for developing the Terrestrial Broadcasting Digital Switchover Strategy in the Republic of Serbia. I.Reljin has participated at different ITU, CEPT, DVB World and DigiTag meetings, World Radio Conferences (WRC) and World Summit on the Information Society Forum (WSIS), DSM and IoT Forum as the Republic of Serbia representative.

Dejan Abazovic is State Secretary at Ministry of Public Administration of Montenegro. He is IT professional, skilled in CIO, CTO, Application development and programing, IT infrastructure and operations, negotiation, business planning, suite, and ITIL. Dejan has Master’s degree focused in Electronics, Telecommunications, and Computers from the University of Montenegro.

He is also a Member of Association of Montenegrin Managers and Board Member of Wireless Montenegro. From 2016 to March 2018, Dejan was Special Adviser for information security, operational risk and business continuity at Central bank of Montenegro. From 2011 to 2016, he was Director of IT Sector at the Central bank of Montenegro. From 2009 to 2011, he was Adviser to the Minister for development of IS at the Ministry for information society and telecommunication. He is author of many published scientific papers and author of the book.

Milan Dobrijevic was born in Belgrade on 22nd of June 1977. Graduated as Master of Science at Computer Science Department of Electrical Engineering Faculty of University of Belgrade.

Dec. 2012 – Present day: Head of Department for Information Society and later Head of Department for Digital Agenda Development in Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications, Government of Republic of Serbia. He helps deputy minister coordinate and manage all key information technology related projects in the Ministry. Milan also helps with development of innovative project ideas and promote wide scale digitalization of Serbian administration and society. He successfully managed many projects in the field of e-government, broadband networks, education ICT infrastructure, e-business and e-commerce etc. Milan also participated in different technology and electronic business related legislation preparation and has thorough experience in public administration reform processes.

July. 2012. – Present day: Chairman of the Board of Academic Network of Republic of Serbia – institution that provides information and communication infrastructure for more than 2.000 institutions of education, science and culture in Serbia including practically all government owned schools and faculties.

June 2011. – Dec. 2012: Assistant Director for Information Technologies in Central Registry of Compulsory Social Insurance and project manager on one of the largest IT public administration projects in Serbia that resulted with establishment of Central registry.

Damjan Mancevski has more than ten years of working experience in the field of ICT, as manager and CEO of several companies. Between 2005 and 2006 he worked as radio frequency engineer in the Agency for Electronic Communications (AEC).

He was elected Member of the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia in the December Parliamentary Elections.

His vision as Minister of Information Society and Administration is to work together with ICT companies to create innovative solutions for strengthening the efficiency of policies and introducing new technological processes to boost productivity, raising Macedonia as an example for the countries in the region in terms of Digital Transformation. Together with his team, Mancevski will work on creating an accountable and transparent public administration that works in service of the citizens, by re-establishing the merit system and strengthening programs for the professional training of officials. Public Administration Reform (PAR) will be implemented in an open, consultative process with civil society, trade unions, chambers, and other relevant stakeholders.

Damjan Mancevski holds a degree from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the “St. Cyril and Methodius” University in Skopje, at the study program” Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications”. In 2009, he was a Chevening scholar at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, gaining a postgraduate degree. In 2003, he participated in the US Department of State program “Young European Leaders and Policies on Current Political, Economic and Social Issues”, while in the period 2003-2004 he participated in the “School for Future Politicians” organized by the Friedrich Ebert and Alfred Moser Foundations.

Mancevski is fluent in English and Serbian/Croatian.

Dr Oskar Marko is a researcher highly interested in the application of data analytics in agriculture, who received his PhD in electrical engineering from University of Novi Sad, Serbia. He spent the 3rd year of his undergraduate studies at City University London, where he did his final BEng project in signal processing. He was the leader of BioSense’s team that developed novel machine learning methods for yield prediction, smart seed selection, and optimisation of crop configuration, which secured the 1st prize for BioSense at Syngenta Crop Challenge and CGIAR Inspire Challenge.

His main interests are advanced machine learning algorithms, decision support systems in agriculture and multi-objective evolutionary algorithms. He is actively involved in many Horizon 2020 projects and only last year the total budget of the projects he brought to the Institute equaled €1M.

Dr Ivana Gadjanski is a Research Fellow/Senior Scientific Consultant at Institute BioSense, University of Novi Sad; She obtained PhD in Biology from Germany (Georg August University and Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Goettingen), was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar from Columbia University (Gordana Vunjak Novakovic’s Lab for Stem cells and Tissue engineering), TED Fellow (2012) and Young Scientist at World Economic Forum (2014-2015). Ivana is the founder and president of Fab Initiative – NGO working on establishing fab labs in Serbia and promoting digital fabrication for uses in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics). Fab Initiative organized as the main organizer 3 international conferences FABelgrade (2016 and 2018) and FABNoviSadPilot (2018) under auspices of the US embassy in Serbia and implemented a project Fab Lab Petnica in collaboration with Petnica Research Center, funded by the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Serbia. Ivana is implementing digital fabrication in bioengineering and is moving into cellular agriculture field – developing solutions for cultured meat – she recently became one of 14 grantees of the Good Food Institute. Ivana was a co-founder and Senior Scientific Officer at Pubsonic startup (2012-2014). Dr Gadjanski published more than 50 research and review papers in peer-reviewed journals and at conferences and one book chapter, has h-index 12 and serves as reviewer and guest editor at several top journals in her field. Coordinator of H2020 WIDESPREAD Twinning DRAGON project 810755.

Damir Sehovic was born on 22 June 1981, in Berane. He finished primary and secondary school in Plav. He studied finance and graduated with distinction from the Faculty of Economics, University of Montenegro, in 2004.

He earned an MA from the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade in 2007, with the master’s thesis Capital Management in Banks in the Modern Market Economy. He earned his PhD from the Faculty of Banking, Insurance and Finance, Belgrade Banking Academy, in 2015, with the doctoral thesis Coordination of Monetary and Fiscal Policy in Modern Market Economies.

During his studies, he received numerous academic awards and scholarships, including the Award to the Best Student in the Generation from the Faculty of Economics, and the prestigious “10 to 10” scholarship from the Atlasmont Bank, granted to the best students in Montenegro.

He is the author of many research papers in the fields of finance and macroeconomics, and he regularly attends conferences and professional seminars.

In 2005, he joined the Faculty of Economics as a lecturer of monetary economics, banking management, fiscal economics and comparative tax law. He teaches banking and fiscal economics to management students at the Faculty of Economics.

From March 2008 to May 2009, he worked as the Secretary of the Ministry of Finance.

From May 2009 to October 2016, he served two terms as an elected member of the Parliament of Montenegro.

In January 2016, he was elected the Vice President of the Party at the first Congress of Montenegrin Social Democrats.

In November 2016, he was appointed to the post of the Minister of Education.

He speaks English. He is married and has two children.

He was born on 20 November 1976 in Belgrade. He completed the 9th Grammar School Mihajlo Petrovic Alas in Belgrade, and graduated from the Megatrend University Faculty of Business Studies. He obtained the title of Master of Economic Sciences by defending the thesis “Modern Principles of Management in Local Self-Government” in 2011. He received his PhD in June 2013 on the subject “New Role of Strategic Management in Local Governance Management”. He completed the High Security and Defence Studies.

From 2004 to 2008, he was employed in the company for foreign and domestic trade Interspeed in the position of marketing director. From 2008, he was transferred to the position of financial director in the company Jabuka.

In the period from 2004 to 2008, he was an assembly member in the Belgrade City Assembly. In the 2007 parliamentary elections, he was elected as MP, and also served as the Chairman of the Committee on Trade and Tourism of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia.

In the 2012 elections, he was elected MP of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia.

From July 2012 to April 2014, he served as the President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia and Chairman of the Committee on Children Rights. He was the head of the parliamentary delegation in the Interparliamentary Union.

He was appointed Minister of the Interior in April 2014, and since August 2016 he is also Deputy Prime Minister.

In November 2017, he was appointed Secretary of the National Security Council, and at the same time he is also the Head of the Bureau for the Coordination of Security Services.

He also serves as the President of the Council for the Fight against Human Trafficking, Commander of the National Emergency Management Headquarters, President of the National Council for the Prevention of Negative Sports Events and the Coordination Team for Directing Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Activities.

He is one of the founders of the Serbian Progressive Party, a member of its Presidency and president of the Belgrade City Council.

He speaks English and Russian.

He is married to Ana and has a daughter named Nina.

Excellent organisational skills, teamwork, commitment to problem solving and determination in implementing the necessary reforms, long-term parliamentary experience, as well as dedicated work during the performance of the duties of the Speaker of the National Assembly, resulting in the adoption of numerous laws that have contributed to a better life of Serbian citizens, are only part of the activities that qualified him for the office of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior.

In the previous term, with the great help and support of the then Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, he carried out numerous reforms in the Ministry of the Interior and improved the position of police officers by procuring new uniforms, vehicles and equipment.

He was awarded the “Best European 2013” award in the field of politics for the results achieved in the improvement and promotion of European standards of parliamentary democracy, as well as the “Captain Misa Anastasijevic” award for contributing to the positive image of Serbia.

He is the recipient of the highest recognition in the field of national security of the Ministry of Interior of Romania, as well as numerous plaques by foreign ministries of the interior as a sign of excellent cooperation with the Serbian police. He is the honorary citizen of the Municipality of Grocka.

His hobbies include reading and photography.

As the president of the National Assembly, he remained, among other things, famous for his fight and advocating for pregnant women and mothers. The Law on the Exercising of Rights to Health Care for Children, Pregnant Women and Women in Labour was adopted on his proposal. He also launched the famous campaign “Priority for Children and Pregnant Women”, which is still active.

One of his many initiatives, as the Minister of the Interior, was the introduction of the “Fundamentals of Child Safety” program in the first, fourth and sixth grade in all schools in Serbia, with the desire to educate children at an early age about all the challenges and dangers they can be exposed to, and on how to deal with them.

On his initiative, in May 2018, a memorial was erected to all members of the Ministry of the Interior who died on duty. This is the first monument dedicated to killed police officers.

With 25 years of technology industry experience in sales, management and technical roles, Ilijana joined Kaspersky Lab in January 2018 to lead the European business and drive growth in consumer, digital and enterprise markets.

Ilijana joined Kaspersky Lab from Oracle, where she was the Senior Sales Director with responsibility for sales growth in Germany and Switzerland. She has also held a number of senior leadership roles at Kontron, Saba Software, Juniper Networks as well as a previous tenure at Kaspersky Lab from 2010 – 2012 when she served as MD for Western Europe. Prior to that, Ilijana held a variety of roles at Microsoft, including being responsible for the organisation’s enterprise and partner strategy for Central & Eastern Europe.

Slobodan Marković works as Technical Advisor – Digital Governance in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Serbia. For 20 years, he has been actively involved in advocating and formulating ICT policies in Serbia. Prior to engagement in UNDP, he worked in the Serbian National Internet Domains Registry (RNIDS) as Advisor for ICT Policy and Internet Community Relations. Between 2014 and 2017, he was a member of the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG), which advises the UN Secretary-General on the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). In the period from 2008 to 2012, he worked in Serbian Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Society, where he advised the Minister on telecommunications liberalization, e-government, and e-business policies. In 2010, he received the “e-Commerce AWARD” for a decade-long contribution to the development of e-business in Serbia.

Doc. Mihailo Jovanovic, Ph.D., graduated and received his Masters Degree at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade as one of the best students in his generation. He has a PhD. in economics and holds a title of Assistant Professor for the scientific field of quantitative methods. He has 20 years of professional experience in Telekom and the Post of Serbia, where he had, for the past 14 years, been a member of the Board of Directors responsible for information technology, electronic communications and development. In the period 2014-2016, as a member and coordinator of the Executive Board of the Post of Serbia, he contributed to the achievement of the best business results in the history of the Post. As of April 2017, he has worked as an eGovernment advisor in the Cabinet of the Prime Minister.

Doc. Mihailo Jovanovic, PhD., is a member of the Serbian Chamber of Engineers with the licences for responsible designer and contracting engineer for telecommunication networks and systems. He received the award of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Development of the Government of the Republic of Serbia in 2002 at a public call “for the best young researchers and scientists who, with their engagement, contributed to the development of science and technology, changes in the country, as well as the ongoing reforms; who remained in the country and contributed to its overall rapid development and connection with the world.” He is the author of several books, monographs and thirty expert scientific papers in the field of information and communication technologies, eBusiness and economics, presented at leading domestic and international conferences and in reference journals.

In addition to designing, developing and implementing a completely new postal technology and information system and establishing regional postal and logistics centers in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Nis, some of the very successful references of Mihailo Jovanović in the field of eGovernment are: establishment of the first qualified certification bodies for issuing qualified electronic certificates and time stamps in the Republic of Serbia, establishing a central system of electronic registers, “Baby, welcome to the world” project, registration of citizens for free shares and trading in securities, registration of citizens in the process of applying for restitution and technical and technological support to citizens in the process of TV signal digitalization.

Comes from a family of renowned Serbian doctors. He is a proud husband and a father of two boys.

Upon graduation in 1998, started building expertise in local economic and rural development and standardization, as an expert and team leader in USAID programs in Serbia and the region, through the design and implementation of complex development projects for economic recovery and entrepreneurship worth over 10 million dollars. As the first employee of NALED, and its Executive Director since July 2007, instrumental in growing an independent membership organization that five years later grew into the largest public-private association aimed at building favorable business environment in Serbia. As a graduate philologist, gained further education in the field of economics and project management in specialized training and study programs in the United States and Europe. Engaged as a motivational speaker and moderator at professional conferences around the topic of women’s entrepreneurship and leadership in country and abroad. Gained international experience as a consultant in the field of certification and intellectual property protection. Actively contributes to the preservation of traditional heritage of Serbia and employment programs for women through the role of the founder and president of Ethno Network.

Dejan Djokic has been the Director of Asseco SEE in Serbia since February 2017. He started the company engagement as Project Manager in 2005, and further career development led him to the position of Director of Profit center for infrastructure services. He has managed and took part in a number of projects of crucial importance for the company, in financial and public sector in the region, as well as major regional projects in the field of telecommunications. Before joining Asseco SEE, Dejan worked as engineer-associate in Jugoimport company and as technology engineer in Zepter International. He graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Belgrade, earning a degree in the field of industrial engineering.

NALED Digital Cooperation in development of Governmental Service

April 5, 2019, 15.00 – 15.15, WB6 stage (main stage)

Digital platform (BFE) for improvement and harmonization of business environment and exchange of best policy solutions in the region through digitization and introduction of digital services for citizens and businesses. The platform includes specific digital systems: e-seasonal workforce, e-licenses, e-cadaster, e-agrar, e-public procurement, e-auctions, e-space, as well as e-certification as an electronic system for standardizing municipal services. The emphasis is on the systems that have been implemented and the concrete results achieved through mutual support and cooperation in WB 6, along with the announcement of further exchange.

Since June 2001, as the Executive Director of ZELS, included in the preparation of legislation that sets the basis for the current decentralization of competences and finances, a process which is being implemented in the Republic of North Macedonia as of July 2005. 15-year long experience and knowledge gained working with municipalities across North Macedonia and the region, and her specialization in the area of fiscal decentralization, enables her to be a visiting professor on the topic of local government at the Faculty of Law within the University in Skopje. Under her leadership, ZELS gained international recognition and became a member of CEMR (Council of European Municipalities and Regions), NALAS and ALDA. ZELS delegation participates in the work of the Joint Consultative Committee between the Republic of North Macedonia and the European Union, represented via the Committee of the Regions. Her skills in the field of local and organizational management are advanced by taking part in study programs in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, etc. Her professional career started as an engineer and grew in the direction of project management, commercial and project engineering, coupled with trade promotion, and extensive experience in administration, accounting and organizational management.

She graduated Finance and Banking at the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade, and holds a Master degree in International Finance and Management from Bocconi University in Milan and Anderson School of Management in Los Angeles.

She came from Luxembourg where she has been working in the Lending Operations of the EIB since 2004 as a Loan Officer. In the last three years, Dubravka was responsible for Public-Private Partnerships and Project Finance operations in Ireland, France, UK, and Benelux. Until 2013, she was responsible for EIB’s operations in the Balkans. She negotiated and executed the first PPP in the region (financing of airport concession in Zagreb). For this project, she won Project Finance Deal of the Year 2013 and EMEA Finance Magazine European Deal 2013 in London. She initiated the establishment of the Western Balkan Investment Framework (WBIF) and the Western Balkan Enterprise Development Innovation Facility (WB EDIF). Before joining EIB, she worked in the media as a Television Producer for CNN, covering conflicts in the Balkans and the war in Afghanistan, for which she won an award in the USA from the US National Academy of Television, Arts and Sciences.

Master’s degree obtained in 2011 at the University of Tuzla, Jozo Bejic currently holds the position of Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Development, Entrepreneurship and Crafts. He is external Associate of the Business School Logos center in Mostar where he works as a Professor. First President of the Regional Business Friendly Council (BFC SEE), and currently Chairman of the Network for local economic development of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (NLER FBIH). Co-President of the JICA Alumni association in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the final stage of defending doctoral dissertation titled ‘’Entrepreneurship infrastructure in the function of development of small and medium enterprises in Bosnia and Herzegovina’’. Holder of meritorious awards, most permanent ones being the awards for the development of entrepreneurship in the territory of SE Europe Creators for centuries and NALED’s Arrow for the achievements in the function of the first President of the Regional Network for Business Friendly Environment.

Holder of a graduate degree from the Faculty of Economy, University in Niš. In 2012 he obtained a Magister degree from the same faculty, attending the program Management of Economic Development and earning the degree Magister of Economic Science. Before engaging in local administration, he worked as a Branch and Regional Manager in a microfinance organization ”Agroinvest fond”. He was elected the Mayor of Ćuprija in 2013, and joined NALED Executive Board in 2017. He publicly advocates the abolition of para-fiscal charges, with predictable costs of doing business and aligning the utility service prices for citizens and businesses, and actively works on improving the work of local administration through BFC SEE program.

Peter Wolf has over 25 years of professional experience in managing development cooperation projects in Central and Eastern Europe, South East Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Southern Africa and Near East countries. He graduated Foreign Trade studies at the Berlin Institute of Economics and has gained his professional experience as an advisor in direct foreign investments, regional economic development, small and medium scale companies promotion, mineral resource governance and development of communal services. As a Program Manager at the Centre for International Migration and Development, he has been in charge of development of portfolio and worldwide placement of integrated experts in countries in transition including the countries of Western Balkans. He served as an advisor for several ministries in South East Europe in international Economic Relations, Foreign Direct Investments, Donor- Coordination and EU-approximation. Currently he is managing the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH Open Regional Fund for South East Europe Modernisation of Municipal Services, a Project oriented towards spurring the regional cooperation among the countries of Wester Balkans in the sector of municipal services.

Yngve Engström has worked for the European Commission since 1996 and has more than 20 years of experience in managing staff, extensive experience in EU integration and transition economies, good governance and public procurement, international financial cooperation and managing of budgets. He has held several positions within the Commission’s services for external cooperation and in particular for the EU enlargement process.

Since October 2017, Mr. Engström serves as Head of Cooperation at the EU Delegation to Serbia, overseeing a 49 people strong operational team and the annual allocation of 200 million euro of EU pre-accession support to Serbia.kos.

Most recently, since 2013, Mr. Engström held the equivalent position at the EU Delegation to Albania and before that from June 2007, Mr Engström was heading the Regional Cooperation & Programmes Unit within the European Commission’s Directorate General for Enlargement in Brussels, managing the programming and implementation of pre-accession support for regional cooperation and horizontal programmes for the EU enlargement countries.

From 2004 to May 2007, Mr Engström was Head of Section for financial and legal issues at the European Commission’s Delegation to Turkey, and before that he held various positions in the Commission’s external cooperation services as Legal Advisor and Coordinator in the area of financial cooperation.

Before joining the European Commission, between 1989 and 1996, Mr Engström served as a civil servant at the Ministry of Industry and Commerce in Sweden, and as a Legal Advisor and case handler at the Swedish Competition Authority.

Yngve Engström holds Master Degrees in Business and Public Law from Gothenburg University. He is a Swedish national.

Aleksandar Bijelic is Chief Digital Officer at MK Group in charge of digital transformation, through defining strategy and supporting execution of strategic projects.

He has graduated and received his master’s degree from Faculty of Organizational Sciences and finished Executive Marketing Education at London Business School.

In his career as a top management consultant Aleksandar has worked with AT Kearney, Boston Consulting Group and Deloitte in restructuring, developing organizational transformation, increasing operational efficiency and defining digital strategies for numerous organizations across South East Europe in areas of financial services, retail, manufacturing, telecommunications, oil and gas industry.

During the work in Deloitte as Senior Manager for Strategy and Operations, Aleksandar has been facilitator at Deloitte University delivering lectures to consultants across EMEA region.

Hi is supporting development of innovation and startup ecosystem in SEE region, serving as a President of Board for Serbian Venture Network, and is active member of Serbian Association of Managers.

He was born in January 1957 in Belgrade. After completing the XII Belgrade Grammar School, he graduated from the Faculty of Science and Mathematics of the University of Belgrade – Department of Geography. During his studies, he achieved top results and was entitled to accelerated studies. He graduated at the age of 22. As a scholarship holder, he completed postgraduate studies at the Department of Environmental Protection, at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies of Belgrade University.

The overall professional engagement of Minister Sarcevic is related to the field of education. His basic commitment is to work on the development of the quality and efficiency of the educational process.

He worked as an educator at the Student Centre of the Secondary Railway School in Belgrade and as a geography teacher at several Belgrade schools. As a teacher he achieved remarkable success for which he received numerous recognitions from many social organisations of that time, such as the Council of Technique and Science.

At the beginning of his career, at the age of 33, he became director of the Nikola Tesla elementary school in Belgrade and managed professional activities of school directors.

For the needs of the state, he participated in the founding of the Branko Radicevic elementary school and the XV Belgrade Grammar School.

He is the initiator of the opening of several private schools, both in Serbia and in the region (the first private grammar school and in general the first private institution in Montenegro).

In 2003 he organised and started, as director, the operation of the Rudjer Boskovic General Grammar School in Belgrade. Two years later, in 2005, he founded a primary school of the same name, which was the first private elementary school in the country, thus forming a unique system of pre-university education.

As director of the Grammar School, and then as the general manager of the Rudjer Boskovic Educational System, he engaged in the introduction and establishment of high standards in the primary and secondary education.

He is a founder, with a group of like-minded people, of the Republic and Regional Centre for Talent. He was an advisor to the German School in Belgrade, Serbian minority schools in Budapest and South Africa (with Zimbabwe).

By following the modern trends in education in the world, he established cooperation with institutions whose mission is to develop high quality international education, which are leaders in the field: IBO (International Baccalaureate Organization) and Cambridge International Examinations.

By supporting and implementing the IB programmes (Primary Years Programme, Middle Years Programme , the IB Diploma Programme), as well as Cambridge Primary, Secondary 1 and IGCSE, Minister Sarcevic introduced the most prestigious international educational programmes in the educational system of Serbia.

He organised and supported projects that connect schools and students within the Republic of Serbia, the region and Europe.

In August 2016, owing to his achievements in educational work and international recognition, he became Minister of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia. Since then, all of his functions at the Rudjer Boskovic Educational System have been frozen.

During his professional career to date, he was awarded the Gold Plaque of the Red Cross and the Council of Technology and Science Award.

In his spare time he engages in recreational fishing.

He is a proud member of the Red Cross and a blood donor.

Married, father of two adult children.

Milan Dobrota is founder and CEO of Agremo, an innovative high-tech software company with global exposure, which leverages AI to analyze aerial images to improve agriculture. Has ten years of experience in entrepreneurship and 18 years in information technology and software industry, including a board-level position in a multinational corporation and senior advisory roles in the area of information technology and business management.

With a software engineering background, holds a Ph.D. in computational statistics, specialized in remote sensing.

Drago Indjic is a co-founder of several European tech startups, director of Richfox Trinity BV alternative investment fund in Amsterdam and Oxquant consulting firm in Oxford.

His investment career started in 1993 and includes diverse, mostly quantitative roles in various hedge funds, a sovereign wealth fund (Kuwait), family office (Fauchier) and a robo-investor ETFmatic, where he has engineered a fully digital investment process that is today managing personalized portfolios for over 200 thousand clients across the EU.

He is a graduate of the School of Electrical Engineering Belgrade and holds a PhD from the Imperial College London. Drago has been managing Hedge Fund Center at London Business School and continued being involved in teaching over the last 15 years. He is an EU expert for fintech and machine learning, currently working for Horizon 2020 program and remains interested in various forms of regional cooperation, from training and corporate governance to investments.

Drago enjoys social networks mostly because he worked at Radio Belgrade 2 in 1980s. He is married to a fellow Petnica participant from Belgrade and has two daughters and two citizenships.

Received her university degree from the Sociology Department within the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade. After completing her studies, she spent five years working in the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunication, where she managed projects from the area of education, such as “Digital School”, “Digital Hour” competition, and the “Click Safely” initiative.

For two and a half years, after her time spent at the Ministry, she worked in the Centre for the Promotion of Science where she was tasked with managing international projects and implementing activities related to popularisation and decentralisation of science.

By working in the Loop Foundation, she has returned to the field of ICT in primary and secondary education, and in her spare time she is still engaged in popularisation of science.

Shpend Lila is sales & marketing executive, experienced communications / M&E specialist, Kosovo* United States Alumni on “US Business Environment” and TV Journalist, who is currently serving as the Training & Events manager, at Innovation Centre Kosovo* (ICK). Prior to his work at ICK, Shpend has served as Communications, Performance & Research officer at the USAID Young Entrepreneurs Program for three years. He is also a certified British Parliamentary debater / judge and American University of Kosovo* graduate on public speaking. He also serves as a Member of Kosovar* Youth Council, one of the most active local – youth NGO in Kosovo*.

On 2006, Shpend won “Best Speaker” honors, by the Institute for Social Studies and Policies.

*This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.