Victoria Pyatanova Ph.D., Head of Financial Management Department of Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Moscow. V. Pyatanova has a Ph.D. degree in Finance from the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics an MBA degree from Cambridge Judge Business School. Honorary Research Fellow of Brunel University London (from 2017). V. Pyatanova has vast practical experience as she has worked on managerial positions in large international and Russian financial organizations, banks, and FMCG companies. Winner of the Russian national contest “Manager of the Year-2009”. Her research interests include themes of competitiveness of a company and strategic finance. Victoria is an author of numerous publications, including books: “International Trade Settlements”, “Company’s Strategy and Competitive Advantage”, “International Financial Management” (in two parts). Disciplines taught: Corporate Finance (Advanced level, ACCA Standard), Financial Management (Advanced level, ACCA Standard), Strategy and Competitiveness of a Company.

Dr. Lucia Brajkovic is an Education Specialist with the Education Global Practice at the World Bank. She is also the Executive Director of the Higher Education Initiative for Southeastern Europe and serves on boards and committees of several international education organizations. Prior to joining the World Bank she worked as a Senior Research Specialist for the American Council of Education in Washington, DC. Lucia holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Higher Education, University of Georgia, USA, where she was a Fulbright Fellow, and an MA in philosophy and sociology from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. Her research focuses on higher education internationalization and global engagement; political economy and higher education systems in post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe; higher education finance; and education and skills development in lagging regions. Her work has been published in international peer-reviewed journals and other venues, including European Journal of Higher Education, Policy Reviews in Higher Education, European Foreign Affairs Review, International Higher Education, and Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions.

Professor Alen Host, PhD is the Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Rijeka. He received his PhD degree in the field of Economics from his home institution and his M.Sc. degree in International Economics from the School of Economics and Business, University of Ljubljana. He is a guest lecturer at many Universities in Europe. He is the co-initiator of the online graduate program in Business Economics, and of the online postgraduate specialist program in Security Management in the EU (of which he is also the co-director). Professor Host has also been a member of the Senate of the University of Rijeka (since 2016), a member of the National Council for Digital Economy (since 2017), and a member of the Strategy Committee of the University of Rijeka (since 2018). In 2016, he was the Government Commissioner for the Municipality of Matulji and, from 2017 to 2020, a member of the Croatian President’s Council for Economic Affairs. In 2017, he became a member of the Commission for Customs and Trade Facilitation of the International Chamber of Commerce in the Republic of Croatia and in 2019, the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of PIK d.d. Rijeka. He is active in the activities of the Institute for Tourism of the Republic of Croatia and was the President of its Management Board from 2018-2020. He is also a member of the Management Board of the Public Institution Regional Development Agency of Primorsko-goranska County.

Gorana Bikić-Carić (PhD in Linguistics) teaches romance linguistics subjects (contrastive romance linguistics, history of romance languages) at the Department of Romance Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. Occasionally she teaches at other universities (University of Bucarest in 2009, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest in 2017 and 2020). She participates at international romance linguistics conferences, where she presents her researches in French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian. She got her MA degree in 1995 in the field of computer assisted learning in the university studies of French, and her PhD degree in 2008 (French and Romanian articles in comparison with their Croatian equivalents, using a parallel corpus). Her interests also include corpus linguistics – currently she leads an institutional project named Parallel Corpus in Romance Languages and Croatian (RomCro) that started in 2019 and is included in the 2021 ARCA Innovation Exhibition, Zagreb. The corpus is aimed to be used in linguistic researches (including students’ graduation thesis), as well as in translation and educational studies.

Saša Janićijević, MSc founder and CEO of Codemap, is an experienced tech entrepreneur with a focus on the no-code/low-code space, and a proven track record in strategy and management consulting, project management, and business development. Sasa doesn’t have a typical IT resume. This 33-year-old from Zagreb graduated from the Faculty of Economics in his hometown, after which he attended SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan, where he obtained a specialization in pharmaceutical and medical technology. This landed him a position at IMS, a pharma consulting giant, where he worked for several years in Munich and London offices as a consultant for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
After a successful career in pharma consulting, he decided to take the leap and create his own startup, a recruitment marketplace for pharma talent – Hloop. Long story short, the project ran into development issues, the team ended up spending over $100,000 in two years and was left without a final product. Looking for better development experience, he discovered the no-code community and realized its full potential. In less than two months, he was able to build a fully functional marketplace platform by himself, without writing a single line of code. A year later, Codemap, his freelance marketplace for no-code/low-code gathered over 600 vetted experts and agencies and has had over $4,000,000 in value of projects posted by more than 1,200 founders, startups, and SMEs looking to build their applications or automate their workflows. No-code/low code is the future of development that will shake the whole software industry as we know, irreversibly and quicker than anticipated. Gartner analysts predict that low-code programming platforms will be used for 65 percent of all application development in 2024, and Forrester expects the low-code market to reach a value of $ 21 billion as early as 2022.

Lana Balić Matijašević, MBA is Founder & CEO of Careesma for Virtual assistants, Talent Management and Organization Development Services. Careesma is an IBM business partner, and with BI predictive proprietary methodology combines analytics and augmented intelligence, enhanced and scaled human expertise and optimized virtual assistant management. Careesma solves bottlenecks in the business administration process for companies which are expanding their business model and scaling their revenue. Lana graduated from the Zagreb School of Economics and Management and currently attends MBA studies. At ZSEM she was the head of the Career Centre where she developed a process with 92% of student employment success. She gained experience in HEC in Paris and John Carroll University (JCU), in Cleveland, USA. At the age of 26 she received the opportunity to work for several years for the a significant VW retailer in Croatia where she produced software for human resource management for 800+ employees. She specialized in finding ROI (return on investment) of people performance from financial and human resource data analytics. From 2012 she has successfully introduced technological transformation and operational processes in several Croatian and international companies. She has a local experience and international experience with global companies like InfosecGlobal, working with their leading cyber security specialists.
She works as Advisor for Business Operations and Human Resources for companies which are providing tailor-made automation solutions for Kuka, Ford and Amazon. From 2017.- 2022. Lana continued to carry out her five-year transformation plan that calls for the market average of consumer movement growth of 25% yearly toward virtual assistants, talent management and automatization.

Ivica Siladić, PhD is one of the founders and the Chief Technology Officer at Mireo, a Croatian-based company specialized in embedded GPS navigation systems and GPS/GSM vehicle tracking. For the last 15 years, he’s been managing and directing the development of all vital Mireo products, gathering experience in embedded systems, digital maps and GPS navigation systems, fleet tracking, and Big Data analysis.

He’s a passionate programmer with deep knowledge of C++ and lots of other computer languages. He’s also a passionate Human Machine Interface designer.

Ivica Siladić has a Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematics, University of Zagreb.

Inga Koryagina, PhD is a Head of the International Division, Vice-Dean at the Faculty of Finance at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics and is awarded the 5th place in Associated Professor’s university rating in 2019-2020. Her academic disciplines are Marketing, Services Marketing, Strategic Marketing, International Business Etiquette, Cross-Cultural Сommunications in Business in Russian and English for bachelors and masters. In September 2020 she participating in the project of the Komsomolskaya Pravda website KP.RU – ” Healthy conversation”. In March 2020 she participated in the preparation of the participant in the finals of the Olympiad on team management in the professional sphere HEAD HUNTER -2020, who took 1st place, Rusalliance “Sova”. In January 2020 ​she received a diploma for the scientific advising of the student who won 1st place in the Open Competition of Initiative Research Projects “HIGH GOALS – 2019” with the article “The Current State of Academic Mobility of Foreign Students in Russia”, Rusalliance “Sova”. In July 2019 she was a Guest Lecturer at the Pompeu Fabra University International Business School and ESCI Universitat Pampeu Fabra Graduate School of International Business (Barcelona).

Professor Dr. Michael Hathorn teaches in the MBA program and Diploma in Sustainable Business at BSL. He is a partner of OPTIMIS and leads the Optimis Learning business, where he focuses on sustainable executive and organizational development. Previously working for the investment management firm, Capital International, Prof. Dr. Hathorn founded and headed the firm’s Learning and Organizational Development function for the European businesses. At TNT in Amsterdam, he served as Group Director of Learning and Organizational Development during a major strategic change initiative to create synergies across the three divisional businesses. He is a contributor to the World Business Council on Sustainable Development and is a member of the Society for Organizational Learning and the American Marketing Association. In addition, he is a partner in the area of Board Development at the International Center for Corporate Governance where he focuses on talent development and board diversity. Prof. Dr. Hathorn is a graduate of Louisiana State University with an MS in Marketing. He received his Ph.D. in International Business from the University of St. Gallen.

Josip Hrgović, PhD is Director’s assistant for science at the Agency for Science and Higher Education. He completed his PhD in philosophy at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. From 2001 to 2013, he worked as a sociologist at Pilar Institute of Social Sciences. In 2013 he joined the Agency for Science and Higher Education , where his current responsibilities are management of the Department for Science and organization of the work of sections in the Department, cooperation with other Director’s assistants in the strategic planning and further development of the Agency.  He is coordinator and Assistant Coordinator in a number of procedures for re-accreditation of institutions in higher education system and research system, initial accreditation procedures in the research system as well as coordinator in the procedures of selection and medium-term evaluation of centres of excellence in research in the Republic of Croatia. Through the Agency for Science and Higher Education he is providing expert support to the National Council for Science, Higher Education and Technological Development and doing analysis, processing and interpretation of data from accreditation procedures and participation in writing reports.

Amy Gillett, MBA is the Vice President of the Education sector and specializes in designing and delivering executive education programs in emerging markets. Prior to joining WDI, Gillett served in the foreign service in Prague, Czech Republic as a Masaryk Fellow responsible for political and economic research. She also worked as a marketing executive for Hewlett-Packard and The Clorox Company. She has a Master of Business Administration degree from Cornell University where she attended as a Park Leadership Fellow, a master’s degree in Russian and Eastern European studies from Stanford University, and a bachelor’s degree in Slavic languages and literature from Stanford University. Additionally, Gillett holds certificates from the Pushkin Institute in Moscow and St. Petersburg State University in Russia. She is fluent in Russian and speaks some Czech, French, and Spanish.