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LGI Managers
Adrian Ionescu, Program Director
Adrian has been the Director of the Local Government and Public Service Initiative (LGI/OSI) since 1997. Under his management LGI has grown from a small grant-giving program to a well established international development cum think-tank establishment addressing local government, public administration and public policy. His area of interest at LGI is sub-national governmental finance and fiscal accountability. Adrian is also a visiting professor at CEU, teaching a course on intergovernmental fiscal relations in the Masters in Public Policy Program. He was a member of various steering groups and committees, including LOGIN, FDI, LGID Ltd., PASOS and the working group on local democracy for the Stability Pact region. Before joining LGI, he worked as a Project Manager for the Soros foundation in Romania and previously as a Research Officer for the Ministry of Public Works and Regional Planning in Romania. He holds a certificate from Harvard University, an MBA from Universite du Quebec a Montreal/ASE Bucuresti and a M.Sc. in Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Bucharest.
aionescu@osi.hu
Scott Abrams, Deputy Program Director
Scott focuses on good governance and economic reform projects in South Eastern Europe, Indonesia, Mongolia and Peru. He manages LGI's local participatory development program, relations with the Policy Association for Open Society (PASOS) and the Network of Associations of Local Authorities in South East Europe. He has worked with the Soros national foundations in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Mongolia, Montenegro and Serbia and manages most LGI projects in those countries. Before joining LGI he worked in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations at the United Nations. Scott holds a BA in History and an MA in International Relations. ascott@osieurope.org
Publications:
Masha Djordjevic, Project Manager
Masha manages the English-language LGI Policy Fellowship Program and the Policy Communication Training Program. She is also responsible for projects related to urban management, strategic planning at the city level, and public participation in local decision-making. She manages LGI relations with the regional capacity building program run by Partners Foundation for Local Development, Romania (FPDL). She works with the Open Society network’s national foundations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro, and manages LGI projects in those countries. She is holding a BA degree in Sociology from the University of Belgrade, a MA degree in Sociology from Central European University in Warsaw, and a PhD degree in Political Science from the Central European University in Budapest.
mdjordjevic@osi.hu
Irina Faion, Project Manager
Irina comes to LGI with experience in the areas of policy and project development and public administration reform assistance through her work with UNDP/NY and Bratislava and most recently, USAID/Bulgaria. For close to three years she was the lead consultant for the UNDP crisis management Early Warning System, implemented in Albania, Bulgaria, BiH, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. Under the anti-corruption USAID-funded Open Government Initiative Project in Bulgaria, she managed and coordinated local government - NGO partnerships in the area of transparency and accountability (delivery of access to information assistance and public relations trainings and provision of information to citizens) and municipal procurement practices. Prior to that, she was employed as a researcher at the East European Program of the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York and as a manager of the Media Sustainability Index of IREX/Promedia in Washington DC. She has an MA in English Studies from Sofia University, Bulgaria and an MA in International Affairs from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Yale University. ifaion@osieurope.org
Petra Kovacs, Project Manager/Researcher 
Since 1997 Petra has directed the Managing Multiethnic Communities Program (MMCP). She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Local Governance Brief policy journal published by LGI. Her other duties involve the development of training curricula, the design of training programs and training delivery. She holds an MA from the ELTE-UNESCO Ethnic and Minority Studies Program and a DEA Degree in Public Policy from the University Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne. She has a Ph.D. in Public Policy from ELTE University in Budapest. Her main areas of interest are public management of ethnic and social diversity, minority access to public services and good governance in multiethnic communities. kovacsp@osi.hu
Publications:
Algirdas Petkevicius, Project Manager
Algirdas focuses on issues of public service delivery and regional development, and manages the portfolio of LGI activities in Central Asia. He holds BA in Political Science from Vilnius University, LLM in Comparative Constitutional Law from Central European University, and an MSc in Development Management from the London School of Economics. From 1996-2001 he held various positions in the Lithuanian Ministry of Public Administration Reforms and Local Authorities, and from 2001-2004 he served as Societal Assistant to the Chairman of the Public Administration and Local Authorities Committee of the Lithuanian Parliament. He also worked as a freelance consultant and Seconded Expert to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, in Kosovo, Georgia and the Kyrgyz Republic. apetkevicius@osieurope.org
Irakli Rekhviashvili, Project Manager
Irakli focuses on projects in the Southern Caucasus and Ukraine. His projects deal with anti-corruption policies, issues related to transparency and public service provisions. He holds an M.P.A. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Rekhvias@osi.hu
Nadir Redzepi
Nadir is managing the Making the Most of EU funds for Roma in project SEE region. He has been more than 10 years Roma advocacy activist at national and international level. Since the start of the Decade of Roma Inclusion he was recognized as an activist aiming to contribute Roma integration and institutional setup on Roma issues. During this period he held various positions in managing and coordinating Roma related activities in the Western Balkans region. He is Board member of Roma Education Fund since 2007 and has been member of Roma Initiatives Office Sub-board in 2009 nredzepi@osieurope.org
Savelina Roussinova, Project Manager
Savelina is managing the Project Generating Facility (PGF) component of the Making the Most of EU Funding for Roma initiative. She holds MA degrees in English philology and in Human Rights and has worked for 15 years with Roma rights advocacy groups in Bulgaria and internationally. She brings to LGI a rich experience in human rights research and international advocacy as well as in-depth knowledge of anti-discrimination law and government policies on Roma in Europe.
sroussinova@osieurope.org
Kristof Zoltan Varga, Project Manager
Kristof leads effort to respond to need for LGI services and support in new geographic areas including but not limited to Indonesia and Africa. He is also active in using information technology solutions for governing purposes with special emphasis on the implementation of access to information laws, increased efficiency and effectiveness and using the "governing by numbers" paradigm. He develops and implements the external communication strategy for LGI including taking responsibility for the LGI website, the LGI annual report, information sharing on LGI work and networking with LGI partners in the donor, academic and NGO community. Kristof is supporting Szilvia Szekeres in developing and managing the Local Government Information Network, an information clearing house for local government decision-makers in Central and Eastern Europe. He served two terms as an elected member of the Budapest City Council working in the areas of budgeting, procurement, information technology, and cultural affairs. Kristof holds an MA in Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University. kzvarga@osi.hu
Publications:
Viola Zentai, Project Manager
Viola focuses on issues related to good governance, social policy, policy research capacity building, public administration education, South East Europe, and Mongolia. She is also the Director of the Center for Policy Studies at Central European University, Budapest. She assists the work of other OSI programs including the International Policy Fellowship Program, the Think Tank Fund, and the Network Women's Program in different capacities. She has a B.A. in Economics and an M.A. in Human Geography from the Corvinus University of Economics, and a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the Rutgers University, NJ, USA. vzentai@osi.hu
Publications:
Gabriella Matei, Senior Program Manager
Gabriella is seconded by LGI to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg to monitor and assist the governments of 10 South East European countries with their decentralization work-plans to which they committed themselves at Inter-Ministerial Conferences of Zagreb (2004) and Skopje (2006). Gabriela provides both direct technical assistance to the 10 countries and facilitates the matching of their needs with international resources and expertise, including that of LGI and the Council of Europe. She graduated from Bucharest Polytechnic Institute and was an International Fellow of The McDonough School of Business and Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service - Georgetown University.
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