I am a Data and Evaluation expert, former journalist, with 18 years of professional experience, currently working as Evaluation, data and knowledge expert, in the core team of MELDEA project, providing help desk evaluation support DG INTPA and DG NEAR. Following an education at the European School of Brussels II, he graduated in Journalism at the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve (UCL, École de Journalisme de Louvain), and worked for 4 years as a journalist in Brussels covering EU News. This was followed by 7 years working in the management of International Development projects for consulting companies, and 7 years working as an expert in evaluation, data analysis, communication and knowledge management for the evaluation helpdesk technical assistances with DG INTPA, DG NEAR and FPI, which is his current assignment.
In the past 7 years, he has applied his data analysis skills and knowledge of EU Project Cycle Management to the field of developmental evaluation, with the objective to improve evaluation practices and learning from evaluations in the EC institutions. He has an excellent knowledge of EU Policies and guiding principles of Team Europe initiative, Strategic Planning and Programming Cycle (SPP), Financial Guidelines and EU funding mechanisms, and an excellent knowledge EC financial and contracting procedures (PRAG, INTPA Companion), Intervention Cycle Management guidelines, internal reporting and monitoring.
Bianca Baumler is an expert in EU strategic communication and public diplomacy and engages with civil society, local government and other stakeholders across the globe. She has been working for the EU for around 18 years - as both a senior consultant/expert and as an EU institution staff member.
Bianca is the part-time key communication expert for the European Commission (DG INTPA – International Partnerships) DEAR programme: Development Education and Awareness-Raising. She also works as a free-lance consultant, drafting communication strategies and writing speeches.
Bianca worked at the EU Delegations to Syria and to Ukraine for seven years – shortly before the wars erupted. She has led EU public diplomacy projects and activities in South Korea, Indonesia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa.
Part of the founding team of the European Endowment for Democracy (EED), Bianca developed all its communications and outreach from scratch. She worked together with civil society representatives and democracy activists in the EU Neighbourhood to promote their work and the role of the EED.
Bianca regularly organises VIP, civil society and media visits and tours. She has run and evaluated 360’ communication campaigns, together with PR agencies and EU officials. She has organised hundreds of events on topics ranging from democracy support to AI, from climate change to LGBTI rights. She has a particular interest in the EU Green Deal, and has organised many relevant communication activities, including the EU-Ukraine Sustainable Energy Days, which have since become an annual event.
A Fulbright scholar, Bianca has degrees from Yale University, SciencesPo-Paris (1998-99) and the Free University-Berlin (1996-2000), and recently completed an executive Harvard course on leadership and community organising. Bianca is the author of “EU Public Diplomacy in an ever-changing world.” A US-German citizen, she is fully tri-lingual in English, German and French, and also speaks Italian.
Online education trainer, specialising in inclusiveness in education:
Experienced in the development of blended learning programme ;for students of a variety of ages and abilities, in the essential skills of numeracy, literacy and computer skills, replicable in community centres and schools, internationally.
Experienced in writing policies to implementing sustainability locally council
Yıldırım Gündüç was awarded an undergraduate degree in International Relations from Hacettepe University in 2009. Following the completion of his Master's degree in Eurasian Studies at Middle East Technical University in 2012, Mr Gündüç commenced his professional career at Ankara City Council and subsequently took up a position at the Prime Ministry. From April 2011 to May 2024, Mr Gündüç had the privilege of working as an EU Affairs Expert at the Department of Project Implementation in the Directorate for EU Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 2020 to 2021, he had the privilege of working as a National Expert at the European Commission's Directorate-General for Energy. He was actively involved in a number of capacity-building and grant projects that were closely related to civil society organisations and local authorities. Mr Gündüç has also published two books: EU Grant Schemes: 100 Questions & 100 and Management of EU Funded Technical Assistance Contracts and Grant Programs. In addition, he maintains a personal blog (www.yesilsehirler.com) where he shares best practices, inspiring examples and news from the EU that local authorities may find beneficial in relation to green and smart city issues.
A Master Degree Holder thoroughly familiar with various aspects of procurement, administration and management in both the private and public sectors, and in a highly professional and multi-language (Arabic, English, and French) environment.
Long experience in operations, procurement, logistics, administration and projects management,
Ability to handle organised knowledge, and to scan the organisational and subject matter environment,
Ability to work with senior people in a substantive way, applying interpersonal and organisational skills and maintaining productive relations with staff and people from other units and agencies,
Ability to manage various teams, assessing conflicting demands, determining priorities, following-up, ensuring that work is done correctly, meeting goals and on time.
I completed the following Certificates:
Strategic Diploma in Public Procurement, CIPS 4
The Leadership Development Pathway
Working at UNDP in Countries under crisis conditions, such as Syria and Lebanon, I was able to operate over a multitude of portfolios, projects and agencies, including the projects under fast track and those dealing with the Syrian crisis, with initiatives to resolve complex cases and fast effective delivery of Projects’ milestones.
With over 20 years of professional procurement experience, including 2 years’ experience as International Procurement Specialist at the UNDP Syria Office and 10 years of experience serving as the head of procurement unit at the UNDP Lebanon Country Office, I have directly supervised the offices procurement teams and managed the procurement processes of portfolios of several subprojects worth 100 of millions of dollars.
With the start of the Syrian crisis, I managed to adapt to the sudden increase in work volume whereby the UN is engaged in one of the largest crisis response operations in the world. From an average yearly delivery of around 20 million USD per year prior to the Syrian crisis, I managed the procurement operations worth around 65 million USD of delivery per year. This covers procurement related to small, medium, ad large scale physical infrastructure project, individual consultancies, as well as medium and large-scale services projects. This has contributed to the positioning of UNDP at the forefront of the response to the implications of the Syrian crisis
In the course of the challenging recent 4 years at the Banking Sector in Lebanon, and through my commitment and dedication, I was able to handle the extraordinary workload and huge number of administrative processes, despite the continuous new introduced changes to procedures and market crisis situation.
All tasks that I handled and managed at UNDP and then at the private sector, entailed dedicated efforts in executing transactions until reaching the requested results and outputs.
Ex INTPA official
Tom Becker is a researcher in urban studies. He holds a Master in Social Science with a major in Human Geography (Umeå Universitet, Sweden) and a Bachelor in History (University of London, United Kingdom). He has been a member of the Department of Geography and Spatial Planning at the University of Luxembourg since 2008.
He is particularly interested in urban governance. His research focuses primarily on urban policy and urban development both in Europe and in Luxembourg, evidence-based policy making, policy mobilities and policy transfer, energy policies, and spatial planning in Luxembourg and the Greater Region as well as science-policy interfaces.
Between 2008 and 2015 he led the Cellule nationale d’Information pour la Politique Urbaine (CIPU), a national platform for urban policy issues in Luxembourg. He was national contact point for the European Urban Knowledge Network (EUKN) and national dissemination point for URBACT until 2016. During that time, he participated as a national expert in a series of European projects such as the Reference Framework for Sustainable European Cities (RFSC), C-Change (Interreg IVB) and Europe 2020 going local (INTERREG IVC). Between 2010 and 2015 he co-organised the Observatoire Belval. He is currently actively involved in the UniGR-Center for Border Studies (UniGR-CBS), and the SolarZukunft (Institute for Advanced Studies) and Energy Neighbourhood Games (PSP Classic, FNR) projects.
He is deputy course director of the Formation continue en Aménagement du territoire (Continuous Training in Spatial Planning- FCAT). His teaching activities include courses in FCAT, the Bachelor in European Culture, the Bachelor in History and the Master in Geography and Spatial Planning. Previously he was also a co-organisor of the interdisciplinary BA course on Film and Popular Culture (Bachelor en Cultures Européennes).
