Mathieu Bousquet is the Head of Unit in the European Commission Directorate General for the Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (NEAR). He is responsible for DG NEAR relations with Georgia, Moldova and overall coordination on governance and economic affairs for the six countries of the Eastern Partnership. He is in charge of a portfolio of contracts of 1.5 billion EUR, including access to finance, support to SMEs and business development. He works at the crossroads between political development, policy dialogue and support assistance. Mathieu has experience in many East-European, African and Asian countries where he managed development assistance, under French and UN agencies and since 2002 EU institutions. He also led on a programme on combining governance and international trade. He holds a Msc of Agronomic sciences and a Msc of Water Engineering.

David Ringrose, Head of international affairs at DG CONNECT, European Commission. David coordinates the policy and regulatory dialogues that DG CONNECT holds with partner countries & regions around the world. He promotes the systematic integration of digital policies and tools into the EU’s external relations, from its development cooperation to enlargement, and from trade to the neighbourhood policy. While serving as Acting Director for the Policy Strategy and Outreach Directorate, David was responsible for the communication strategy for the Digital Agenda and the launch of the Digital Single Market after handling communication for the European Commission abroad at 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. He worked on the fifth enlargement of the EU from 1997 to 2003, both in Brussels and Prague, coordinating the EU’s communication strategy in the candidate countries. David is a graduate of the University of Kent at Canterbury, and the College of Europe in Bruges, and holds the Certificat d'études Politiques from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris.

Hoa Binh Adjemian is the Head of Sector Economic Development Easter Partneship Countries (NEAR C1). He was previously the Head of Cooperation for the EU Delegation to Armenia, and Head of Infrastructure Section in Benin. Binh also has an extensive experience in public private partnerships in Asia. He has graduated from Harvard Kennedy School of Government, l’Ecole Polythechnique and l’Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris with a MPP, M.Sc and M.Eng. He is married with three kids.

Arturas Piliponis is a Consulting Partner at EY, leading the EY Digital services dedicated to the EU institutions. Arturas has over 22 years of experience in managing complex eGov and digital transformation projects in Government and Public, and Financial and Telecommunication sectors, including Broadband. Over 15 years of his experience have been dedicated to providing assistance to national authorities in key areas of the digital economy and society in line with EU norms and best practices, including projects in the Eastern partner countries. His fields of expertise include strategy and organisation-wide business transformation, IT-enabled transformations including program and project management. As the Team Leader of the EU4Digital Facility programme, Arturas directs the execution of the programme activities in the Eastern partner countries across six thematic areas, overseeing a large team of international experts specialising in the digital domain. Arturas holds an MS in Finance from Kaunas University of Technology.

Juan Navas-Sabater is presently Lead Digital Development Specialist in the Vienna office of the World Bank, and member of the World Bank’s Digital Development Global Practice, having played a similar role in the Brussels office of the World Bank since 2015. He is Cluster Lead in charge of digital development 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 Programme Leader for Sustainable Development in the Russian Federation, based in Moscow, and before that he was Regional ICT Coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean in the ICT Sector Unit of the World Bank based in Washington DC, where he worked since joining the Bank in 1998.

Jan Lüneburg is the Project Director for the EU-financed ’EU4Digital: Cybersecurity EAST’ project, implemented by a consortium consisting of GFA Consulting Group GmbH (DE/lead), E-Governance Academy Foundation (EE), Detecon International (DE), Action Global (CY) and in partnership with the German Federal Office for Information Security (DE). Jan Lüneburg is responsible for the overall coordination and management of the backstopping function. He is currently Portfolio Manager within the Governance Department at GFA headquarters Hamburg, leading the Europe, Middle East and North Africa Team. He has more than 15 years of working and project management experience, policy development, capacity-building, organisational development and training programmes in the IPA, ENI countries and Middle East. From 2012 to 2018, he was Head of Democratisation Department of the OSCE Mission to Serbia where amongst others he led the Mission’s Security Sector Reform program including the development and implementation of a pilot OSCE Cybersecurity project that culminated in the establishment of the first PPP Cybersecurity initiative in Serbia. Jan Lüneburg has long-standing experience and a high level of expertise in public administration reform, human resources development, legal approximation and policy implementation as well as in performance monitoring and evaluation of TA projects.

Besnik Limaj is the Team Leader for the EU-financed ‘EU4Digital: Cybersecurity EAST’ project, implemented by a consortium consisting of GFA Consulting Group GmbH (DE/lead), E-Governance Academy Foundation (EE), Detecon International (DE), Action Global (CY) and in partnership with the German Federal Office for Information Security (DE). He has an extensive background as a Team Leader and Senior IT KEY Expert. He holds an MBA degree from the University of Sheffield and Level 7 Diploma in Strategic Management and Leadership from the from Chartered Management Institute in London. In addition to his formal education, Besnik is a certified expert for cyber security, holding a plethora of relevant certificates (TRANSITS I CSIRT Cyber Security Train-the- Trainers Training, Metasploit for Pentesters, Advanced Cyber Security Program, Certified Information Systems Security Professional Training, Advanced Ethical Hacking, Certified Ethical Hacker, Wireless Hacking and Security). Furthermore, Besnik possesses in-depth knowledge of various programming languages and technologies (MS SQL Server 2000-2016, Oracle 11g and 12c, MySQL, ASP.NET, VB.NET, JDeveloper, ANSI SQL, XML, PHP, Apache, HTML, CSS) and he was a speaker at and attended numerous international cyber security conferences. Besnik has travelled the world and came across various people and cultures from Hong Kong in the East, to San Francisco in the West and is adaptable to multicultural and international environment. 

Veronika Di Luna is Senior International Relations Project Manager at GÉANT (UK). Veronika has been working at GÉANT for the past six years, supporting a range of EU-funded development projects and, in particular, focusing on developing new initiatives to support the growth and strategic development of partner research and education organizations in Africa, Central Asia and the EaP region. The primary aim of these projects is to ensure the long-term sustainability of these initiatives to support the development and expansion of research and education for all. Veronika also coordinated the first GÉANT Emerging national research and education network (NREN).

Erik Huizer has been the CEO of GÉANT (Netherlands) since July 2017.  Before joining GÉANT he was CTO at SURFnet, the Dutch national academic and research network. For more than 30 years, Erik has been involved in education and research in networking, Internet standardisation and Internet governance. For his contributions to the Internet, he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2015 he was honoured with the title 'Dutch ICT personality of the year'. Until 2015 he served as a part-time professor of Internet Applications at the University of Utrecht. He remains a research associate at this university.
He has been teaching at various developing countries workshops on Internet policy and technology. He is a TEDx speaker.

Andrejs Dombrovskis has been a Deputy Director for Electronic Communications and Post regulation at the SPRK, the Latvian national regulatory authority for public utilities, for almost 18 years. He joined the authority in 2001 and was responsible for market regulation and international relations. He has been the SPRK contact point for Independent Regulators Group (IRG) and the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). Before joining the national regulatory authority, he worked with the national competition authority the Competition Council. In various capacities, he has worked in international projects in the Western Balkans, Middle East and Eastern Europe. Andrejs has a degree from the University of Latvia in International Economic Relations, and completed a Master’s Degree in International Business.

Rūta Šalvytė-Tamošiūnienė is an eGovernment and eServices development practitioner with over 10 years of professional experience in promoting thought-leadership in the domain of eGovernment. Rūta is a Senior Manager at EY Baltics and she has led leading major strategic transformation projects in Lithuania, Middle East and Eastern partner countries. As an eGovernment and eServices development expert, Rūta supports institutions to implement complex eGovernment and eServices projects on the state level with a focus on structuring the eServices and ‘e’ solutions that are interoperable on the national level and cross-border. In EU4Digital Facility, Rūta acts as Deputy Team Leader and eTrade Stream Leader responsible for organisational management and coordination of eTrade stream activities, such as cross-border eTrade (eDelivery), eCommerce, eCustoms, Digital Transport Corridor and eLogistics. In these areas, Rūta works with the team of other subject matter experts to facilitate and harmonise eTrade among the Eastern partner countries and with the EU. Rūta coordinated a detailed analysis of legal, technical standards areas and launch of practical solutions to address cross-border challenges of a national level. Rūta is a certified PRINCE2 practitioner and Agile Project Management Practitioner. She is a certified Business Process Management and Usability & User Experience expert and holds academic degrees in Finance and Economics.

Martynas Daugirdas is a Senior Manager in Consulting services at EY Baltic. For more than 15 years Martynas has been involved in various digital healthcare, digital government, public services interoperability and IT governance areas. Since 2019, Martynas has been a part of EU4Digital Facility as a team leader in the eHealth and Trust & Security streams. Martynas is working with his team across the Eastern partner countries to establish harmonised frameworks for eHealth among Eastern partner countries and with the EU, as well as on coordination of Trust & Security activities for cross-border eSignature piloting, development of cyber-resilience guidelines and regional framework for cross-border eServices for business.

Ruta Gabalina is an Assistant Manager at EY Latvia and is currently leading the EU4Digital Digital Skills stream. She has more than 5 years of experience in Consulting services specialising in reform & purpose-led transformation projects for the government, public, health and education sectors and has worked with a wide range of government and public sector clients, including the ministries and their subordinate institutions, training providers and international organisations, such as EBRD and the European Commission. Ruta is a board member of the NGO ‘Quo tu domā?’, which promotes media literacy and critical thinking skills for citizens, students and teachers. Ruta holds a Bachelor’s degree in business and economics from the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga.

Dr. Anna Pobol is the ICT Innovation Stream Leader based in Minsk, Belarus, and an expert in innovation policy and ecosystem development with a focus on digital innovations. She holds a PhD degree for her Dissertation on “Scientific and Technological Spin-off Entrepreneurship: Regularities of Functioning and Development” and is awarded a title of Associate Professor. After 5 years of study and internships in Estonia, Poland, Germany,  Austria and France, Anna Pobol was involved in a number of international projects for the Eurasian Economic Commission, European Commission, World Bank, UNDP, UNECE, National Bank and ministries of Belarus, carried out in the EaP region, covering the topics of innovation policy, digital markets and regulation and digital innovation ecosystem. Anna is now working as the Director for cooperation with the EU and EaP countries at the Scientific and technological association «INFOPARK» (Belarus) and she is an Associate Professor at the Belarusian State University. As EU4Digital Facility ICT Innovation Stream Leader, Anna is responsible for supervision and guiding international teams, development of deliverables, quality control and strategic planning.

Ms. Mara Jakobsone is the Vice-president and Digital Skills and Information Society project manager at LIKTA (Latvian information and Communication Technology association) since 2005. Her main responsibilities include digital skills policy and initiative development, digital skills awareness campaign development for different target groups: adults, SME’s, young people and students and ICT professionals. She has managed several research, education and innovation projects at national and European level and has excellent skills in advocacy related to digital society and digital skills development for citizens and SMEs. Māra is the coordinator of the Latvian National Digital Skills Coalition since 2013 and a member of EC Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition Governing board since September 2017, as well as the expert nominated form Latvia for the Digital skills network of Eastern partner countries since 2016.