Nacho Sanchez Amor has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2019. He is a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Subcommittee on Human Rights, the Delegation to the EU-Türkiye Joint Parliamentary Committee, and the Delegation to the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly. Nacho is actively involved in the EP´s democracy support and election observation efforts. Member of the EP’s Democracy and Election Group (DEG), he has been the leading member for the organization of the DoP Implementation Meeting of 2022 and internal reflection processes on election observation. He has an extensive experience in international policy, human rights and election observation -having conducted more than 25 EU, EP and ODIHR election observation missions, several of them as chief observer.

Stefanie Schiffer is the Founder and Director of European Exchange gGmbH in Berlin and serves as Chair of the Board of the European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE). Stefanie Schiffer studied Slavonic languages and Eastern European History in Tübingen and Munich. She has extensive experience working with civil society organizations in Eastern Europe. She has been a founding member and initiator of several civil society cooperation programs and international platforms, including the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum, the EPDE, the Kyiv Dialogue, and the Initiative Quorum. Additionally, she has served as an advisor to the board of the Marion Dönhoff Foundation and the filia.die frauenstiftung, is a member of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, and sits on the board of Human Rights in Belarus e.V.

Marietje Schaake is currently a non-resident fellow at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. Marietje is a former Dutch MEP (2009-2019, ALDE) focusing on trade, foreign affairs, and cyber security policies. She served as Advisor on Artificial Intelligence to UN’s Secretary General Guterres and as independent special advisor to the executive vice-president of the European Commission, Margrethe Vestager.

Patrick Merloe is a highly experienced advisor to a number of international and US election and democracy initiatives, with over 40 years of expertise in promoting citizen empowerment, governmental accountability, and public policy advocacy. He previously served as NDI’s senior associate and director of electoral programs from 1993 to 2022. Throughout his career, he has participated in over 190 international missions to more than 65 countries, focusing on political rights, electoral integrity, and democratic development. Mr. Merloe played a key role in drafting and negotiating the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation, which has been endorsed by over 50 international organizations. Additionally, he facilitated the process that resulted in the Declaration of Global Principles for nonpartisan election monitoring by citizen organizations, which was promulgated by the Global Network of Domestic Election Monitors (GNDEM) and endorsed by over 290 organizations from more than 85 countries.

Holly is an election expert with 25 years of experience. She is currently the Team Leader of the EU-funded project Election Observation Democracy Support (EODS), where she is responsible for developing methodology and training for EU election observation. She served previously as Election Advisor for the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and as Senior Program Officer for Elections at the National Democratic Institute (NDI). Holly is an experienced trainer of election observers and has provided capacity building for citizen observer groups worldwide. She has developed e-learning courses on election observation, and has written observer handbooks, including the EU Guide for Citizen Observers on Electoral Reform and the IFES/NDI Guide, Implementing and Overseeing Electronic Voting and Counting Technologies.

Rasťo Kužel is a media & election expert with over 26 years of international experience. Since 1998, he has been running MEMO 98, a media-monitoring organization with extensive experience in delivering analyses and technical assistance to OSCE and many other international organisations. For the last 8 years, Rasťo has focused intensively on the issue of online disinformation in the context of elections and on the role of AI and social media during elections and ways to tackle their negative impact on elections. He co-authored a White Paper on Social Media, Disinformation and Electoral Integrity to guide IFES in this area and the UNESCO/UNDP guide Elections in Digital Times. Drawing upon his experience, Rasťo wrote a media monitoring toolkit, which was developed with the support of the Council of Europe.

Sagar is the Director & co-founder of Future Shift Labs, a progressive think tank working on emerging tech, international affairs & governance. An AI expert now, Sagar holds 12 years of experience in strategy. Sagar understands/ideate positive use-cases, products of Artificial Intelligence in Politics & Governance along with their policy implications. He has studied strategy from Columbia B-School, USA, Public Policy from Indian School of Business, Mohali as executive education.

Lukas Andriukaitis is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). Previously, he worked as an associate director at DFRLab, based in Belgium. In this capacity, Andriukaitis researches Russian disinformation activities; military conflicts in Syria, Libya, and Donbas; and Russian private military groups. He is an open-source methodology trainer, organizing workshops and trainings around the globe. Currently, Andriukaitis works as a deployment strategist at Palantir Technologies and teaches classes on digital forensics in College of Europe, Natolin. He is also an associate analyst at the Vilnius Institute for Policy Analysis. Prior to this, he worked as the deputy head of the Strategic Planning Division in the State Railway Inspectorate under the Ministry of Transport of Lithuania. A lieutenant in the Lithuanian military, he served in the Lithuanian Special Operations Forces Special Purpose Service as a support officer. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Vilnius University Institute of International Relations and Political Science.

Tetyana Bohdanova is an elections and civil society development specialist and a researcher of the relationship between technology and democracy. She has over 15 years of election monitoring experience, working with international and domestic organizations across Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, as well as expertise in managing digital security and citizen engagement initiatives. Tetyana has been researching the issue of personal data use in election campaigns since 2019, and currently leads an international Advisory Group on Data Protection and Election Observation for the National Democratic Institute, comprised of citizen election monitors and data privacy experts. She is a 2020 Fellow of the Prague Civil Society Centre, and a 2009 LEAP Fellow at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, DC, where she supported the work of the Election Protection coalition. Tetyana holds an M.A. in Eastern European Studies from the Free University of Berlin.

Linas Skirius is the Co-Founder of the Civic Resilience Initiative. He has over 7 years of professional experience working with disinformation, OSINT, and media literacy, specializing in applying innovative and engaging methods to educational content. Within these 7 years, he developed at least five distinct learning platforms, all based on gamified learning or game-based content methodologies. Linas conducted trainings and created educational materials on OSINT, disinformation, and media literacy for organizations such as  NATO PDD, German and Dutch NATO eFP troops, ZINC Network, the DCN Global network, and investigative journalism representatives from the Baltic States. With the help of GOOGLE.ORG, he developed media monitoring and educational platforms.

Carsten is an associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, member of the Programming, Logics, and Semantics group. He is the The DemTech project leader, which has the main objective of assisting electoral management bodies with the development of digital election systems, the evaluation of threats and challenges, and the analysis and management of risks.

Mulle is the National Coordinator for the Elections Observation Group (ELOG) as well as the Regional Coordinator for the East and Horn of Africa Elections Observation Network (EHORN) which brings together citizen observation platforms in the eastern Africa region. He has been involved in electoral governance related activities since 2007 working as a trainer and administrator for the National Democratic Institute for International affairs during the General Elections program in Kenya.