Francesca has a solid background in regional development and European Affairs. She joined ECN in February 2016 and, having previously worked for the Emilia-Romagna Delegation to the EU, she has a strong interest in dissemination of knowledge about crowdfunding through regional and local authorities. She is responsible for advocacy and organization of events, and is currently coordinating the CF4ESIF working group, aimed at exploring synergies and possibilities for the integration of crowdfunding into European Structural and Investment Funds. Since January 2019, she is also coordinating the ECN Italian Strategic Group, focusing on training and education as drivers for the creation of a favorable crowdfunding ecosystem in Italy. She holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations from the University of Bologna, where she focused on researching the potential of crowdfunding for regional development from a European perspective.

Olga is a Russian in Paris, studying Geography at Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris and Urban planning at Ecole d’Urbanisme de Paris. She is currently working with European Alternatives on the Co-creation project, that aims to bring different urban stakeholders together and to co-create an understanding of addressing urban disadvantage.

Ilinca-Adela Margineanu contributes to the URBACT blog from Bucarest for the URBACT National Dissemination Point in Romania.

Mary Bogle is a senior research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Her research focuses on policies and place-based interventions that help low-income parents surmount the economic, equity, and mental health challenges that often interfere with their efforts to create healthy, productive, and protective environments for their children. During her career, Bogle has worked for street-level human services organizations, been executive director of Grantmakers for Children, Youth, & Families, led the planning efforts for several comprehensive community change initiatives, and been a program specialist for the federal Head Start Bureau, where she played a pivotal role in designing and launching Early Head Start, the premier federal initiative for low-income families with infants and toddlers.

Claudia Chwalisz is a consultant at the London-based reputation and strategy consultancy Populus, where she is bringing the long-form deliberative process to the UK in the form of Citizens Councils. She is the author of The Populist Signal: Why Politics and Democracy Need to Change (2015) and The People’s Verdict: Adding Informed Citizen Voices to Public Decision-making (forthcoming).