Board of Advisors (BoA)

Valentina Cardinali is expert in labor market and gender policies and author of several publications on the subject. She's a senior researcher at INAPP (National Institute for the Analysis of Public Policies)  where she coordinates research groups on gender analysis of the labor market and public policies. Former director of INAPP Labor Market Research Unit, she is currently the national delegate for Italy at the Committee for Local Employment and Economic Development (LEED) of the OECD and is a full member of the international network of experts in work life balance policies (www.leavenetwork.org). Former professor of General Sociology and Sociology of Political Phenomena at La Sapienza University in Rome, she has held several institutional roles as an expert in gender assessment of public policies, including member of the Commission "Female Employment and Wage Gap" established by the Minister of Labor in 2021 where she worked on the topic of gender and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, member of the Equality Forum of the CNEL and expert member of the Authority for the Guarantee of Childhood and Adolescence. From 2017 to 2021 she was Regional Equality Councilor of Lazio.

Florian Hauser is an EU civil servant and a leading expert on public administration reform.

He is the Deputy Head of Unit for Public Administration at the European Commission’s Task Force for Reforms and Investment (SG-REFORM).

From April 2020 to June 2023, he led the Public Administration Reform team at the European Commission's Directorate General for Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, coordinating public administration and public financial management policy for the 20 countries of the European Neighbourhood.

Between December 2017 and March 2020, he worked at the Commission's DG for Reform Support, providing technical support to EU Member States in the area of governance and public administration. He was instrumental in developing the European Commission's Competence Centre on Public Administration.

From June 2013, he coordinated European Social Fund investment for institutional capacity building and public administration reform in EU Member States at the Commission's Directorate General for Employment. As part of this work, he initiated and coordinated the development of the EU Quality Public Administration Toolbox and the work of the EUPACK (European Public Administration Knowledge) project.

Since 1996, he occupied several positions, including: - Policy coordinator of socio-economic development, institution and capacity building for the EC Delegations in Bulgaria and Croatia (2000 - 2007). - Senior consultant, advisor and evaluator of socio-economic and institutional development in Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Austria, Cambodia, Hong Kong and UK.

He has university degrees in management & administration (Aston, UK/Barcelona, ES) and environmental policy (Lancaster, UK), and is a fully trained mediator, and participatory leadership practitioner. Besides his German mother tongue, he speaks fluent English and Spanish.

Elisa Martini is Phd in Sociology and Social Research. She is a labour market analyst and Deputy Director of the Data and System Functions Office for Labour Policies at the Labour Agency of the Autonomous Province of Trento. Her expertise includes analysing and monitoring active and passive labour policies, with projects focused, for instance, on labour demand, female resignations, poverty alleviation, and the silver economy. She coordinates research and studies to deepen understanding of employment dynamics and support the development of effective labour policies.  

Laura R. Peck, Ph.D., has 28 years of experience evaluating social welfare policies and programs, both in research and academic settings. A policy analyst by training, Dr. Peck specializes in innovative ways to estimate program impacts in experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations. Formerly a tenured professor at the Arizona State University School of Public Affairs, Dr. Peck engages in the design and analysis of experiments across an array of subject areas, including housing, education, income security and employment. She earned her Ph.D. from the New York University Wagner School.

Norma M. Riccucci is a Board of Governors Distinguished Professor at the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University, Newark Campus. She has published extensively in the areas of public management, representative bureaucracy, and social equity. She received several awards including the Public Management Research Association’s H. George Frederickson Award and the International Research Society for Public Management’s (IRSPM) Routledge Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2022 she was awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa from IDHEAP, the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.