Our team
Meet the team who will be welcoming you to Civitates Forum
Civitates staff
The Civitates team members who will be attending Civitates Forum.
Fund Director
Elisa Peter
Elisa joined NEF as Civitates’ Fund Director in 2023. Elisa brings more than two decades of experience in fostering open, just and resilient societies through her work in multilateral organisations and civil society.
Senior Programme Manager Civic Power and Media
Eszter Szücs
Eszter Szücs joined Civitates in January 2024, bringing a decade of experience working with civil society and media in Central and Eastern Europe.
Senior Programme Manager Tech and Democracy
Claudio Cesarano
Claudio joined Civitates in 2024. Before joining Civitates, he worked at OSF for four years, first in the Transparency, Accountability and Participation Unit and then in the Tech & Society team.
Programme Manager
Samuel Sigere
Sam joined Civitates in 2023 as Programme and Grant Officer. Previously he worked as a project officer for the European Commission’s Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA).
Programme and Grants Officer
Monika Ramos
Before joining Civitates, Monika worked as a Project Manager for the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN), organising training sessions for judges, prosecutors, and court staff.
Impact and Learning Manager
Maria Guerra-Arias
Maria is a data, evidence, and impact specialist with over a decade of experience working across research, data, and evaluation to support evidence-based decision-making and social change.
Programme and Grants Officer
Elea Cogoluenhes
Before joining Civitates, Elea worked as Programme Assistant for The Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe. Previously, she volunteered with several women’s rights organisations in the UK and in Belgium
Our facilitators
Our team of facilitators have extensive experience in designing large-scale participatory gatherings across diverse contexts – particularly with organisations working toward social change and democratic participation.
Oswald König
Oswald combines extensive experience in large-scale European collaboration through his co-founding of collaboratio helvetica and leadership roles in multi-regional Swiss initiatives like Connexa Helvetica. He brings essential skills for facilitating authentic dialogue across power dynamics inherent in funder-grantee relationships.
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Tamás Hovanyecz
Tamás brings strategic facilitation expertise from designing and facilitating Greenpeace's global climate and oceans strategy meetings, successfully managing 4-day processes with 80+ activists from all five continents while navigating complex power dynamics and diverse cultural perspectives.
Katalin Bartos
Katalin brings proven expertise in participatory democracy through her role in Hungary's first Citizens' Assemblies. Her experience with Art of Hosting methodologies and multi-stakeholder civic engagement makes her ideally suited for navigating the diverse perspectives across Civitates' three sub-funds.
Keynote speakers
Senior Lawyer, Memorial Human Rights Defense Center (Russia)
Grigory Vaypan
Grigory Vaypan is a prominent Russian human rights lawyer, scholar, and Senior Lawyer at the Nobel Peace Prize-laureate organisation Memorial. Specialising in constitutional law and transitional justice, he has extensive experience in strategic litigation before the Constitutional Court of Russia and the European Court of Human Rights.
Director, Truth Justice Memory Center (Turkiye)
Murat Çelikkan
Murat Çelikkan is a human rights defender and journalist who was one of the founders of several prominent human rights organisations in Turkey, including Human Rights Association, Amnesty International Turkey, and Citizens Assembly. Murat Çelikkan is currently the Co-Director of Hafıza Merkezi (Truth Justice Memory Center), an organisation that strives to bring to light impunity, past violations of human rights.
CEO and founder Keseb (US)
Yordanos Eyoel
Yordanos Eyoel is the Ethiopian-American Founder and CEO of Keseb, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization launched in 2022 to strengthen inclusive, resilient democracies through cross-country collaboration. A recognized democracy entrepreneur, she was named an "Extraordinary Leader Transforming a Field" by Unindustrially Philanthropy and previously served as a Managing Partner at New Profit.