Learning for a greener future

With his management team and all staff, Jürgen has led Cedefop to strengthen its position as a go-to ally for the EU institutions, social partners, researchers and practitioners when it comes to analysing the impacts of megatrends on the labour market, on skills, and on training ecosystems – and on how vocational education and training enables a fair digital and green transition.

Jürgen has a background in human-resources management with particular emphasis on learning and education, earned his MSc in economics at the University of Hamburg, and his PhD in business administration from the University of Vienna. 

He previously served for 11 years as a Member of Cabinet of European Commissioners, and for 7 years in the Commission's Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry. Before entering public service he worked for 13 years in the private sector in foreign exchange trading, retail, social enterprise and management consultancy. He has a joint honours Bachelor degree in Economics and History, and a Master degree (M.A. Econ) both from the University of Manchester (UK). 

Stelina coordinates the skills intelligence and foresight team, and contributes to the Centre’s research on skills anticipation and skills governance.

Before joining Cedefop, Stelina worked for almost a decade as a researcher and policy analyst in the private sector. In that capacity, she has worked on and managed projects on national and EU comparative analysis on VET, skills and entrepreneurship.

His work on apprenticeships includes numerous publications, Cedefop’s European database on apprenticeship schemes, symposia and policy learning fora, and Cedefop’s community of apprenticeship experts. Research areas: system-level features of apprenticeship schemes, links of apprenticeship with the green and digital transition, mobility of apprentices, financial and non-financial incentives, apprenticeship for adults.

He represents Cedefop in the working group for Work-based learning of the Interagency Group on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (IAG-TVET) and the Working Group on VET and the Green Transition. 

She supervised the overall management and implementation of various TVET projects implemented by UNEVOC, including inter-alia the Building TVET Resilience Project (2022-2023); UNEVOC COVID-19 Response Project (2020); Skills for Innovation Hubs (2018-2019); and the TEVET Management Capacity Building component of the UNESCO-EU Skills for Technical Education Programme (STEP) in Malawi (2017-2018).

For over 20 years, Ken has worked in various capacities with a goal to contribute in strengthening education and TVET and their linkage with sustainable development, including in UNESCO’s Asia-Pacific Education for Innovation and Development (APEID) Programme at its Regional Bureau for Education in Bangkok, Thailand and Colombo Plan Staff College for Technician Education (CPSC) in Manila, Philippines. She also worked in the public and private sectors in her home country through her engagements in the International Coral Reef Initiative Secretariat - Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Government of the Philippines and Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration and completed a Monitoring and Evaluation certificate with ITC-ILO.

She holds a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering and an MSc in Sustainable Energy Engineering. Dimitra has served as a leader in the Batteries Europe Task Force on Education & Skills and contributes actively to several EU-level projects and initiatives shaping the future of green skills.

From 2015 to 2019, she was the head of the Bulgarian-Swiss project for the introduction of dual education in the Bulgarian education system, which reformed vocational education and made the dual form one of the legitimate forms of vocational training in Bulgaria.

She is currently Chairperson of the Board of the Modern Education Foundation and a National Coordinator of ReferNet for Bulgaria.

Her current research focuses on change management of academic systems for innovation and sustainability, with projects in Vietnam, Jamaica, Colombia, Cambodia and Peru. She has national leadership serving on the Board of Directors of Food Processing Skills Canada and as a past President of the Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology.

She is a senior mentor with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization World Food Forum and a graduate of UNESCO's Technical Education Leadership School. Outside of work, Amy’s family runs a small agroforestry farm in rural Niagara. 

Her objective in international projects is to implement new solutions for transition processes in Europe. She is specialised in moderating participative, multistakeholder processes, initiating change processes through co-creative techniques in organisations and institutions and in developing new educational service approaches.

During the last 5 years she has been coordinating the projects Future4VET, GreenVOCnet, GreenTecLab, GRÆ DUCATION in the area of VET.