Advisory Board Members
Mel Flanagan
I have devoted my career to the protection of vulnerable populations, and admire the work that Improve has done. As a criminal prosecutor for 10 years and a judge for 24 years in the United States, my focus has been on domestic violence, sexual assault, and crimes against children. In my last 5 years as a judge, I ran a specialty court dedicated to these crimes and trained judges and prosecutors throughout the US on best practices. I have been residing in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina for 7 years training judges, prosecutors, police, lawyers and law students in the region and in India and Africa.
Måns Enqvist
I have a wide over 40 years of policing experience from different fields and on different levels. For the last seven years I’ve been working in the Police Operative Unit in the National Police Board, which is the HQ of the Finnish police. I’m working in the Crime Section coordinating and advising nationally on crimes against vulnerable people; THB, FGM, Honor Related Violence, Hate Crimes and domestic violence. I’m a member of the National Board on the implementation of the Istanbul Convention. I have a long experience of multi-professional cooperation and cooperation with different NGO’s. I believe my experience will be of use in the advisory board.
Roxana Maracineanu
As General Secretary of the Interministerial Mission for the Protection of Women against Violence and the Fight against Human Trafficking (MIPROF), I'm keen to share French expertise in the fight against domestic violence. The aim of MIPROF is to help frontline actors identify and address victim’s needs by promoting specific training and providing training tools to help them understand such violence. MIPROF will share its experience as a national coordinating body for public policy to fight violence against women. Collecting, analyzing and publishing data to raise awareness of the phenomenon at the french level is also part of our mission.
Denitsa Kozhuharova
She is an experienced researcher and consultant in the area of fundamental rights, victims’ rights and electronic evidence. She leads the Human Rights Department of the Law and Internet Foundation, where she is charge of the research on data protection and privacy issues. Her work there also includes the analysis of fundamental rights and their respect in data-driven technological solutions. Denitsa has worked on the implementation of the EU GDPR in several large public bodies – among them the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science. She has been involved in feasibility studies for AI technologies applied to the redesign of public services. She’s a keen public speaker and trainer and has authored several peer-reviewed articles.
Laura Albu
She is since June 2022 member in GREVIO (Group of experts on action against violence against women and domestic violence of the Council of Europe ). She was Vice President of the European Women’s Lobby (EWL) (2018-2021) and 2014-2021 a member of the EWL Executive Committee, where she handled a portfolio of projects related to violence against women, anti-discrimination, asylum and diversity. Since 2016, she has been promoting, as an expert, the Council of Europe's provisions on access to justice for women victims of gender-based violence, using the Istanbul Convention as a tool - in the Eastern Partnership (Moldova) and Arab countries. She represents Romania as an expert in the EWL European Observatory on Violence against Women (2010-2016, 2019- present) and has been the President of the Romanian Women’s Lobby in Romania since 2015. Since 2000 she is the executive president of the Community Safety and Mediation Center Foundation in Iasi, Romania, where she coordinates projects in the field of violence against women, rural development, European cooperation and conflict resolution.
Elizabeth Lichtenstein
She is a physician from Sweden, and has always been active and engaged in Gender topics, and as one of them is VAWG, where domestic violence is highly overrepresented when it comes to women and girls this subject is significant to her. She taught this in the curriculum of medical school when she worked at The Karolinska Institute in the 90s. Sadly DV is still a huge problem in all countries and one that she even meets as a physician in different forms. She’s also involved as VP of MWIA (Medical Women’s International Association) and responsible for MWIA in Northern Europe. She hopes to contribute to the IMPROVE project from a medical and scientific aspect as well as a human.