Ms. Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau, ITU.
Ms. Doreen Bogdan-Martin was elected Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau in November 2018 and took office on the 1 of January 2019. She is a strategic leader with 30 years' of high-level experience in international and inter-governmental relations, and a long history of success in policy and strategy development, analysis and execution. From 2008-2018, she led the Strategic Planning & Membership Department of ITU, and also served as Coordinator of United Nations Affairs. She was one of the architects of the annual Global Symposium for Regulators and leads ITU's contribution to the EQUALS Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age. She serves as Executive Director of the UN Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, and is leading ITU's collaboration with UNICEF and others on the GIGA project to connect the world's school. She holds a Master's degree in International Communications Policy from the American University in Washington, DC and a post graduate certificate in Strategies for Leadertship from the Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland. She is an affiliate of the Harvard University Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and a Generation Unlimited Champion. She serves on a number of advisory bodies, including the Geneva Tsingua Initiative, the SDG Lab Advisory Board, and the UN Technology Innovation Labs. She is also an amateur radio operator. Ms Bogdan-Martin is married with four children.
Mr. Jaroslaw K. Ponder, Head of the Office for Europe at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) (Geneva, Switzerland), representing ITU in Europe and directing actions, projects, initiatives and experts groups targeting 46 countries of the Europe Region. His portfolio includes set of Regional Initiatives for Europe, designed by the European Member States and focusing on the ICT Infrastructure, Digitization, Digital Inclusion, Accessibility, Innovation and Cybersecurity. Along the professional career, Mr. Ponder held official positions in the public sector and was a contributor to the legislative projects having the impact on the public policy. Since 2014 Mr. Ponder has been working for ITU holding diverse positions in the General Secretariat, Telecommunication Development Bureau, and Regional Presence, addressing complexity of information society development and digital transformation at national, regional, international level, including United Nations level. For several years he has managed ITU’s work on the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) process, leading towards the establishment of the annual WSIS Forum, WSIS Prizes, WSIS Stocktaking, others.
Ms. Alia El-Yassir is UN Women Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia and Representative to Turkey since September 2018. She has been working with UNIFEM/UN Women since 1997. She previously worked as the UN Women Special Representative in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), managing a complex portfolio of programmes and projects, as well as supporting the UNCT and HCT on establishing coordination mechanisms for tackling gender equality and women’s empowerment issues. She is part of the UNDG roster of gender experts and has supported other UNCTs in this capacity. Before joining UN Women, she briefly worked with UNDP and was engaged in the education field. In addition to volunteering with a number of women’s and human rights NGOs, she has worked on educational media for children.
Alia El-Yassir graduated from McGill University in Montreal and pursued post-graduate studies in Education and Anthropology, with a specialization on Gender Studies at Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
Ms. Cristiana Flutur joined the National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) in 2012, as an expert in the Unit for International Relations and European Affairs. In June 2019, she was appointed Director for International Affairs within ANCOM, managing the activity of three units which cover issues such as relationship with international and regional organisations, translations and bilateral cooperation, EU affairs, the organization of events and travels, respectively. Ms. Flutur is the first woman to hold the position of chair of the Committee for ITU Policy (Com-ITU) and co-president of CEPT (The European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations), for a period of three years that started in June 2018. Furthermore, she has acted as European vice-chair of the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2018 (PP-18) and main coordinator for the European Common Proposals and Positions for PP-18. Ms Flutur is an Economics graduate from the Faculty of Finance and Banking, Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies and holds a master’s degree from the same university in European Economics. She has an extensive experience in the public sector, in both national and international institutions.
Dr. G. Anthony Giannoumis is an action researcher that focuses on technology policy and practice. He is an internationally recognized expert in universal design of information and communication technology (ICT) and conducts state-of-the-art research on implementing universal design principles in practice. Anthony leads and participates in several large-scale research and innovation projects based in over 17 countries. Anthony is an Associate Professor of Universal Design of ICT at the Department of Computer Science at
Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). He maintains several international appointments including at the Harvard Law School Project on
Disability at Harvard Law School, the Burton Blatt Institute at
Syracuse University, the Department of Science and Informatics at the
University of Eduardo Mondlane, and the Department of Education at
Roma Tre University. He works with the United Nations (UN) International Telecommunications Union (ITU) as the Vice Rapporteur for the subcommittee on
ICT Accessibility and Access Coalition Liaison for
EQUALS. He is founder and Chair of the Board for the Global Universal Design Commission Europe AS and MyGoverNext Oslo. He is a member of the board for the
Global Universal Design Commission and the
Gender Equality in Technology student organization. He has been a member of the
Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion and was awarded a
Marie Curie Fellowship as part of the
DREAM research network. Since 2014, Anthony has acted as a principal investigator for research and innovation projects with budgets totaling over nine million EUR. He maintains a 25% success rate in acquiring grants and external funding and has an average score of 10.7 out of 15 for proposals submitted to the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 program. He has authored over 30 peer-reviewed academic publications in leading international journals. He has accrued over 79 citations. Anthony has taught over 2,300 students and supervised 19 Master theses and one Ph.D. dissertation. He has also mentored over 18 startups, half of which have been led by women. Anthony has received awards from the UN, OsloMet, Cambridge University, and other foundations and associations. He regularly teaches courses and lectures around the world, appears frequently on national and international media, and maintains a strong presence on several social media platforms.
Ms. Hamsika Premkumar is the founder and CEO at Development Goals Form (DGF). Prior to DGF, Hamsika was part of "Girls and Technology" in Norway where the focus was to raise awareness and promote girls to choose STEAM. She is passionate about leadership, health politics and sustainability. Hamsika has an educational background in development studies and political science.
Ms. Maja Handjiska-Trendafilova is the Head of Programme Department of the Regional Cooperation Council. Her tasks include overseeing the coordination, implementation and monitoring of the first regional development and growth Strategy – SEE2020, the Multi-Annual Action Plan for a Regional Economic Area and Common Regional Market agenda, as endorsed by Western Balkans Prime Ministers. Prior, she has held the positions of SEE2020 Strategy and Regional Economic Area Coordinator; Senior Expert on Inclusive Growth and on Connectivity within RCC, working on various regional cooperation, consensus, confidence and capacity building initiatives across a range of multidisciplinary policy areas. Her professional career of over 15 years, drawing upon regional and international multilateral experience, has chiefly been dedicated to furthering the EU integration and regional policy dialogue and cooperation processes of SEE. She has an over decade-long experience within the national administration, where she led the national programming process for the use of EU funds and coordinated the EU-funded cross-border cooperation programmes. Her insight into the Europeanization and EU alignment processes has been generated during her diplomatic service within the Mission of North Macedonia to the EU in Brussels. Further to her political and diplomatic expertise, she has also worked on programme development, partnership and resource mobilization in the areas of migration management and counter-trafficking for the International Organization for Migration. With a Master’s Degree in European Politics from the renowned London School of Economic, she is a recipient of excellence awards in the area of international relations.
