Getting the future right: Towards smarter and people-centred skills intelligence

Jürgen has a background in human resources management with particular emphasis on learning and education, the strategic development and roll-out of work-based vocational education and training programmes, as well as related corporate social responsibility initiatives. In this context he has also collaborated with institutional actors at national, European and global levels.
Before joining Cedefop in Thessaloniki, Jürgen served for 20 years in various leading operational and strategic HR roles in Siemens AG, mostly as senior manager with global governance or business partner responsibilities. Jürgen earned his MSc in economics at the University of Hamburg, and a PhD in business administration from the University of Vienna.

In 2004, he was appointed Minister Delegate for Foreign Affairs and Immigration. From 2009 to 2018, he held the position of Minister for Labour and Employment in the Luxembourgish government. He served as a Member of the European Parliament for the social-democratic Lëtzebuerger Sozialistesch Aarbechterpartei following his election in May 2019. Nicolas Schmit holds a Doctorate in International Economic Relations and a Masters in French Literature from the University of Aix-Marseille.

Jiri also contributes to Cedefop’s Digitalisation and future of work project and works on connecting of outcomes of various Cedefop’s projects in agency’s skills intelligence products and visualisations. His prior working experience includes an assessment of labour market outcomes of skill recognition systems for the ILO and during past 15 years he has been involved in many projects focusing on skills and labour market analysis across Europe.

She has been involved in vocational education and training since she joined Cedefop in 1994.
As Head of Department from 2004 to 2014 she managed teams of experts working in European VET policy analysis, adult and work-based learning with specific focus on apprenticeship-type learning and the European tools for recognition and transparency of qualifications, such as the European qualifications framework.
She holds a university degree in economics and a master in economics, politics and law of the European Union.
Her mother tongue is Italian (born in Perugia) and she is fluent in English, French, Greek and Spanish.

Prior to joining the European Commission, she worked in the private sector as a management consultant and for the United Nations Development Programme. She holds an MSc in Financial Economics from the University of London and a Master in Public Administration and Management from the Solvay Business School (Brussels). She completed her postgraduate studies at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna.

She is currently also associate professor in labour economics at ULB and external lecturer at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL). Her main research interests include gender studies, the impact of welfare states on labour supply, wages and working conditions, and more recently the development of the European social dimension. Ms Jepsen has been a member of various committees, councils and advisory boards at national and international level on employment, social, gender and research issues. She has also served as a coordinator on the European Commission tripartite advisory committee on health and safety at work. She holds a PhD in Economics and a Master’s degree in Econometrics from the Free University of Brussels (ULB).

Before joining Cedefop he worked as a research fellow at the Institute of Economic Research Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. His main tasks were related to macroeconomic modelling, labour market analyses and analyses of regional development. He took part in many research projects related to the key policy reforms and labour market transition in Slovakia. Together with his team, he developed the first labour market demand model for Slovakia.

Marju Lauristin has been Minister of Social Affairs in the first independent government of Estonia in 1992-1994. She had been member of Estonian parliament in 1994-95 and 1999-2003 and member of the European Parliament in 2014-2017. As a MEP she had been dealing with the issues of digital Europe, being a shadow rapporteur of GDPR and rapporteur of e-privacy regulation. Recently she had been involved as an expert in preparation of strategic vision for Estonian education 2021-2035

Ilias is involved in several other Cedefop projects (including Mismatch priority occupations and Skills governance). Ilias is an economist by training, with a PhD in employment research from the University of Warwick, where he worked for a number of years prior to joining Cedefop. His expertise is in labour economics, education economics, and industrial relations. Ilias has published articles in various top-ranking journals including: Industrial Relations: a Journal of Economy and Society, Regional Studies, Industrial and Economic Democracy, Journal of Economic Studies, Education Economics, Applied Economics Letters, Higher Education, the International Journal of Manpower, Personnel Review, and the Journal of Labour Research.

Joanna Napierala holds PhD in economics from the Faculty of Economic Studies University of Warsaw. She previously worked as Policy Analyst at Joint Research Centre of European Commission where she contributed to the research on the future of education and work. She co-authored following publications: "The changing nature of work and skills in the digital age", “What did we learn from schooling practices during the COVID-19 lockdown? Insights from five EU countries” or “Telework, work organisation and job quality during the COVID-19 crisis. A qualitative study”.

Prior to joining BusinessEurope, Robert worked as a political adviser for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) party.
He attended Keele University in the UK and holds a Ph.D in industrial relations and human resource management, focusing on a comparative study of the demand for EU migrant workers in Sweden and the UK. He also has an MA in European industrial relations and human resource management and a BA in human geography and human resource management.

His proudest achievement is the development of two waves of the Cedefop European Skills and Jobs Survey. He has been scientific advisor and author on skills anticipation and skill mismatch for the European Commission, the World Economic Forum, ILO and the Greek Ministry of Labour and has been regular instructor for the ILO-ITC. He has represented Cedefop at high-level international conferences in Europe, USA, Middle East, Asia and Latin America. Before joining Cedefop he held posts at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Cyprus and worked for the Bank of Greece and HM Treasury. He has been invited Professor at the Universita Degli Studi Roma TRE and Visiting Research Scholar at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He is Honorary Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen Business School and IZA Research Fellow. He holds an M.Phil from the University of Oxford (St. Antony’s College) and a D.Phil from the Scottish Graduate Program in Economics. He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals of education and economic science (e.g. Oxford Review of Education, Economica, Journal of Economic Surveys, Research in Labor Economics, Education Economics, International Labour Review).

An economist by training, Antonio has taught regional economics at the University of Rome since 2002. As Head of Area at CLES in Rome, an independent centre of studies on labour market and economic development issues, before joining Cedefop he coordinated research in design, monitoring and evaluation of public investment and policy.

He has a master degree in quantitative and general economics and holds a Ph.d. in social sciences. As a researcher and project manager at the Dutch research centre for education and the labour market (ROA) Jasper led research projects on labour market issues, skills, employability and obsolescence of knowledge. He also worked on HRD and HRM, taking an economic perspective to human resources issues. Jasper started working for Cedefop in 2007. He led the centre’s early work on skill mismatch, coordinated the centre’s work on national VET systems and policies for several years, and led the centre’s skills governance work.

As a member of the Eurostat task force Big Data, he coordinated the implementation of the Big Data action plan and roadmap aiming at exploring new data sources for the European Statistical System. In 1999, he started working at Eurostat contributing to the preparation of the INSPIRE directive that established a digital infrastructure for geographic information in the European Union. He holds a degree in physical geography by Johannes Gutenberg university, Mainz, specialised in Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing.