After hearing from a wide range of policy practitioners from Europe and around the world at all stages in their policy journeys, in the course of the Open Call for our Inaugural Policy Leadership Cohort, we are excited to announce the launch of our first Policy Leadership Cohorts.
Our goal is to support the broadening of the digital policy space by working with emerging leaders as they navigate systems that can often feel opaque and complex, and over time to drive more meaningful policy outcomes in Europe, and beyond.
We were truly inspired by the passion, knowledge and range of perspectives expressed in the open call. Going forward, we will continue to develop and iterate on a variety of offerings for policy practitioners at all stages of their journeys, including new entrants, practitioners, and more established policy leaders.
The Cohorts will remain small groups of between 5-7 people, and we will be seating additional cohorts in December 2023 and early 2024. Stay tuned for that!
The first Policy Leadership Cohort was launched on 19 October 2023 and consists of five emerging leaders who are earlier in their policy journeys. The cohort format will consist of 6 participatory sessions which will be held through October and November, each co-designed with participants. Across these sessions, participants will have an opportunity to acquire a range of policy and policy-related skills including but not limited to: navigating the EU policy maze; centering narrative, building networks, facilitating power, enhancing negotiation techniques and strategy building.
A throughline we’ve heard in processing incoming requests to participate and in ongoing conversations with policy practitioners, is the desire to connect with and learn from peers, and accomplished policy practitioners. The Policy Leadership Cohorts are one way we intend to support, elevate, and empower policy practitioners, and we look forward to developing more offerings as the program evolves.
Meet our Emerging Policy Leaders
We’re thrilled to announce the participants of our Policy Leadership Cohort:
Pamela Chemelil - Pamela is a human rights advocate and a doctoral researcher specialising in advocacy, and international and foreign policy. Her research speciality is on human rights issues within the context of the European Union's policies in Africa.
Benjamin Ignac - Benjamin is a Roma rights activist from Croatia, currently living in Berlin and working in the field of academic research and publishing. With experience in communication and advocacy, he is a public policy practitioner interested in the intersection of human rights and technology.
Lauren Mason - Lauren works as Policy and Advocacy Manager at the European Youth Forum, focusing on youth participation and digitalisation. She advocates for digital policies that work for young people, as well as fighting to get more youth voices brought to the table during policy discussions at EU, CoE and UN levels.
Keerti Rajagopalan - Keerti is Project Management Lead at Global Partners Digital. With a background in global governance, development and human rights, Keerti is aspiring to learn new skills and gain further policy experience within the field of responsible technology and human rights - and reimagining an inclusive and sustainable technology future for everyone.
Saurav Roy - Saurav works at Carbon Tracker Initiative, a London-based climate finance think-tank, where he enhances the impact alignment of research teams. Trained as an ecological economist, he is interested in what public and private financial mechanisms and policies can be deployed to accelerate the just-energy transition.
Next steps
We are genuinely grateful to everyone who has expressed their interest in the program, and we look forward to continuing this journey together and co-developing offerings to support and expand a vibrant community of practice around policy leadership topics.
We are also grateful to be supported in all our Policy Leadership activities by Asja Lazarevic, who is co-costing our cohort sessions and wearing a range of hats including communications, engagement, supporting our advisory group, and program logistics.
We’ll accept expressions of interest to participate in the Policy Leadership Cohorts on a rolling basis, and schedule them throughout the year. If you are interested in participating, simply submit your expression of interest.
We’ll continue to share updates as we build, iterate, and learn. In the meantime, we’d love to hear from you! If you’d like to learn more about the program, including receiving updates about offerings, sign up by emailing policyleadership-announce@lists.aspirationtech.org.