2024 Policy Designers Network

Narine Chukhuryan is a co-founder and executive board member of Civil Youth Center. From 2016 to 2018, as a volunteer of the Civic Youth Center, she participated in projects related to local democracy, youth employment, and media literacy. In 2019, as a regional youth leader, she participated in the Dictionary of Youth international exchange program in Zakopane, Poland. She volunteered a year later, with the European Solidarity Corps‘ program, at the Armenian Cultural Foundation in Budapest.

Narine holds a bachelor’s degree in arts and hospitality management from Yerevan State University.

Aspram Krpeyan is a member of Armenia’s National Assembly, where she is part of the EU parliamentary group, chairs the friendship group between Armenia and Portugal, and is a member of the friendship groups between Armenia and South Korea, Japan, Britain, Canada, and China. She is also a NATO Parliamentary Assembly member.

Aspram began a military career in 2012 as an officer in the legal support division of the policy department in Armenia’s defense ministry. After achieving the rank of captain, she served in the information and public relations department. She has also served as a legal expert to the Armenian president and as a lecturer at the Center for European Studies of Yerevan State University.

Aspram is a graduate of Yerevan State University’s law faculty, where she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees. She subsequently pursued master's degrees from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and, in diplomatic studies, from the University of Oxford.

Narek Minasyan began his career as an expert in the international affairs department at the Information and Public Relations Center, an agency under the office of the Armenian prime minister. He subsequently headed the department, which is responsible for monitoring and analyzing regional and international developments, and contributing to policy papers for Armenian state stakeholders.

Narek is also an associate expert at the Orbeli Analytical Center, where he focuses on global and regional security issues, and editor-in-chief of international news at Public TV of Armenia.

Narek holds a master's degree in security studies and a bachelor's degree in political science, He is pursuing a PhD in political science with a focus on soft power.

Mariam Muradyan is a child rights expert with an academic background in human rights, political science, social work, and teaching. She is also the regional child rights officer of Global Campus Caucasus and a lecturer at Gladzor State and Yerevan State universities.

Mariam has worked as an expert with child rights monitoring groups in Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and other countries in Central Asia and the Eastern Partnership. Her research interests include social rights, child protection, juvenile justice, and children's rights to health, education, social protection, and living with a family.

Mariam holds bachelor’s degrees in philology and social work, and master’s degrees in human rights and democratization, and European interdisciplinary studies.

Viktorya Muradyan is a communication officer for the European Liberal Forum, a Brussels-based think-tank and political foundation that promotes liberal EU values and policies, and a co-editor-in-chief of the European Correspondent (TEC). She was previously leading editor for TEC’s Eastern Europe team.

Viktorya is also a freelance writer and an advisory board member for the European Youth Press. She frequently contributes to PartyParty, a top European source for political professionals. Before moving to Belgium in 2020, she worked in the public and private sectors in Armenia and France, most notably for aerospace and telecom companies, marketing agencies, diplomatic institutions, the UN, and the Central Bank of Armenia.

Viktorya holds a postgraduate degree in international relations and diplomacy from the College of Europe and a master’s degree in communication management from the iaelyon School of Management.

Giorgi Jangiani serves as the Georgian country lead for the Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), focusing on countering disinformation in Eastern neighborhood countries. An experienced media policy professional, he has research expertise in disinformation, media business, and digital policy. Before joining TRF, he led the USAID-funded Strengthening Democratic Resilience in Georgia program at People in Need. In this role, he led efforts to combat disinformation by supporting media literacy and fact-checking initiatives throughout the country.

Giorgi holds a master’s degree in European public policy from the University of York and Central European University.

Tamar Kapanadze, a human rights advocate from Georgia, works at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. She focuses on combating gender disinformation in Armenia, Georgia, and Poland. She previously worked with various civil society organizations in Georgia, notably Tbilisi Pride, the country’s leading LGBTQ+ organization.

A recipient of a Chevening scholarship, Tamar holds a master’s degree in human rights law from Birkbeck, University of London, and a master’s degree in public law and policy from Ilia State University. She is a fellow at the International Women’s Human Rights Institute.

Nikoloz Khatiashvili is a senior research fellow at GEOCASE, a Georgian think tank, and chief of staff of the Georgian parliament’s Foreign Relations Committee. He is also a lecturer at Tbilisi State University and Business and Technology University BTU. He served in the Georgian diplomatic service for six years and has been involved in several international projects to advance democracy, combat disinformation, strengthen transatlantic ties, enhance the security of the Black Sea region, and advocate for Georgia's integration into the EU and NATO. The projects were supported by the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and the US State Department. He is a McCain Institute global leadership fellow, a member of IRI’s Generation Democracy (GenDem), a member of the Warsaw Security Forum Democratic Network, and a board member of the US government’s Exchange Programs Alumni Association of Georgia (EPAG).

Nikoloz holds a master's degree in international relations and a bachelor's degree in international economic relations from the University of Georgia in Tbilisi. He is a PhD candidate in international security at Tbilisi State University, focusing on Russian nuclear policy as a foreign policy tool. 

Kamran Mammadli (officially Mamedovi) works at the Social Justice Center in Tbilisi, Georgia, where he coordinates and leads efforts to protect the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. Prior to this, he was the Edmund Muskie Fellow at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) in Washington, DC. His professional background also includes serving as a youth engagement officer in IFES’s Tbilisi office and as a specialist at the Government House of Georgia in Kutaisi. Kamran has published several articles and research papers on the rights of Georgia’s ethnic and religious minorities. In 2019, he founded, with colleagues, Salam Platform, which organizes minorities for justice and equality. In 2022, Social Justice Center and Kamran’s work was awarded the Max van der Stoel Award by the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities for their extraordinary and outstanding achievements in improving the position of national minorities.

Kamran holds a master’s degree in conflict transformation from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at Eastern Mennonite University. He pursued the degree as a Fulbright scholar from 2017 to 2019.

Mariam Salukvadze is inspector of especially important cases for the department of human rights protection at Georgia’s internal affairs ministry. Her primary responsibilities involve overseeing investigators and ensuring the timely and effective resolution of high-priority offenses, such as cybercrimes, hate crimes, crimes against women, and human trafficking.

Mariam holds master’s and bachelor’s degrees in law from Tbilisi State University. She was awarded the prestigious Chevening scholarship for a master's degree in criminal justice from Queen Mary University of London with a focus on cybercrime and digital human rights. She is currently on study leave.

With six years’ experience working with local nongovernmental and international donor organizations, Mariam Tsiskadze serves as deputy managing director at the European Business Association (EBA) Georgia, contributing to the country’s economic integration into the EU. She has been working on large donor-funded projects promoting European business and economic interests in Georgia, and facilitating trade between Georgia and EU member states. She devised and implemented youth development programs that are dedicated to promoting European values, raising awareness of economic reforms in Georgia, and youth empowerment to improve career opportunities. She is also coordinating EBA’s youth wing, which provides a unique public-private dialogue platform for young business representatives. She is a member of the supervisory board of the Skills Agency of Georgia, which is responsible for the country’s vocational education agenda.

Mariam has studied at International Black Sea University in Georgia, the University of Tartu in Estonia, and the University of Bologna. She holds a master’s degree in international relations and a bachelor’s degree in political science.

Victoria Nemerenco works as the coordinator of the europeanization, foreign and security policy program at the Institute for European Policies and Reforms.

Victoria has completed training in European law and economics at the Riga Graduate School of Law and at the Council of Europe Schools of Political Studies, and interned at Moldova’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, and at UNHCR. Her work and research focuses on security, local development, European integration, good governance, and elections and media influence.

Victoria holds a master’s degree in political science and political and electoral management from Moldova State University, and a bachelor’s degree in international relations and international organization from the University of Groningen.

Raisa Tofan serves as program officer for Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries with RECONOMY, an inclusive and green economic development program implemented by Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation. Her work supports employment and better income opportunities for youth, women, and disadvantaged groups in the EaP countries by fostering their participation in the energy efficiency and construction renewables sectors.

Raisa is an experienced fundraiser and certified project management specialist, working on inclusive market systems development, private-sector development, gender equality, and social inclusion. Her background includes developing cooperation projects and public programs for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) at the Organization for SME Sector Development in Moldova. She also served as an adviser for resilience and sustainable development in the nonprofit sector, bolstering social innovation and inclusive and green development in Moldova.

Raisa participated in the US State Department’s Community Engagement Exchange Program 2023 and interned with the Upcycled Food Association in Portland, Oregon.

Lidiia Akryshora has served as a head of the Chornobyl-Children Project at GLOBAL 2000, an environmental organization. Prior to this, she worked with American historian Timothy Snyder as a research assistant for the Ukraine in European Dialogue program at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna. Lidiia has experience working in media and public institutions, cultural diplomacy, and social activism. She has organized conferences hosted by the IWM and the Forum Journalism and Media in Vienna, and curated artistic projects.

Lidiia is an alumna of The Journey: Journalism Bootcamp of Bakala Foundation, better.lab’s Realies Program, and the yearlong Eurotours program. She is a freelance journalist for Ukrainian and Austrian media, and has founded several innovative culture and media projects devoted to Austrian-Ukrainian relations, including the Ukrainischer Ball and the online archive Interactive Ukrainian Vienna (www.iuv.guide).

Yuliia Darnytska serves as the international cooperation adviser to the mayor of Chernihiv, Ukraine. She also coordinates aWARe Zone, a platform working to empower Chernihiv youth, and leads the Yuliia Darnytska Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to help those in need.

Yuliia is a board member of the Chernihiv Regional Chamber of Commerce and of Ukrainian Monolitnisty, an NGO that promotes social welfare and economic growth.

Yuliia holds a master’s degree in finance from Chernihiv State Technological University and is earning a master’s degree in public policy and governance from the Kyiv School of Economics.

Andriy Hnidets serves as a national anti-corruption expert for the European Union Anti-Corruption Initiative in Ukraine. Before that, he worked as acting head of the reforms unit in the Office of the Prosecutor General and the head of the normative and legal drafting department at the National Health Service of Ukraine. His previous professional experience also includes more than five years working in the Ukrainian parliament, where he was involved in developing law enforcement and anti-corruption legislation. He also worked as an expert for Council of Europe projects related to the rule of law.

Andriy holds a law degree from the Lviv National Ivan Franko University and a certificate in EU law from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Oleksandra Korbernik works on The Recovery Spending Watchdog, an EU-funded project to set up the Big Recovery Portal, an impartial online monitoring system to oversee the allocation of state and donor funds for Ukraine's reconstruction. She is also a nonresident fellow at the Centre for Economic Strategy.

Since 2022, Oleksandra has served as administrator in the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the European Parliament's general secretariat. where she works on the Parliament's recommendations for relations with non-member states. Her portfolio covers 17 countries. Prior to that, Oleksandra was a change management specialist at Siemens.

Oleksandra was a tutor of international politics at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg and holds a master's degree in international business. She also studied European economy and business management at the University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna and economics at the University of Konstanz. Oleksandra is a graduate of the Open University of Reforms in Kyiv.

Tetiana Prysakar is the chief consultant of the secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) Committee on Economic Development and the legal adviser to the committee chairman. Her primary responsibilities include providing legal analysis of bills, drafting laws, and making recommendations on policies developed by Ukraine’s cabinet of ministers. She is also responsible for the committee’s cooperation with counterparts in the European Parliament, EU member states, and international organizations.

Tetiana has volunteered for seven years at Eudemony of Ukraine, a charitable foundation, where she conducts training and lectures for youth on legal topics. She holds a master's degree from Ukraine’s Yaroslav the Wise National Law University.

Stanislav Taran is a project officer at the Council of European Municipalities and Regions in Brussels. He implements the Bridges of Trust project by facilitating partnerships between Ukrainian and EU municipalities to further Ukraine`s recovery and its European integration.

Stanislav was previously a policy officer at the European Committee of the Regions in the Commission for Citizenship, Governance, Institutional and External Affairs. He managed the activities of the European Alliance of Cities and Regions for the Reconstruction of Ukraine by providing expertise to the EU institutions and coordinating partners’ efforts. He also conducted research on EU-Ukraine affairs, focusing on city-to-city cooperation and decentralization processes.

Stanislav is a certified by the Council of Europe to be a trainer in human rights education. He holds a master's degree from Sapienza Università di Roma and is completing a degree in EU law at KU Leuven.