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.

Michel Wilwert worked as a cluster manager and was responsible for the development and setting up of the first regional cluster of eco-friendly enterprises issued from the building and housing sector in Luxembourg. Since 2012 he is working as an environmental consultant and project manager. Michel Wilwert detains a MA in Urban Geography of the Université de Provence Aix-Marseille, France and a MA in Spatial Planning of the University of Luxembourg. His interests try to identify coherent and sustainable methods of implementing open source principles into day-to-day workflows.

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).

Maike joined the URBACT-Team in June 2017 as a Communication and Event-Intern and was very involved in the organisation of the URBACT City Festival 2017 in Tallinn. The internship is part of her Masters of International Development Studies in Wageningen (NL). Her interest lays in sustainable urban development in Europe, with a focus on urban agriculture. Before her masters, she worked as a campaign assistant in an environment and human rights organisation in her home country Germany and did her Bachelor in Cultural Anthropology in Frankfurt (DE).