Ivan Mikloš was Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Slovak Republic in 2010 – 2012 and 2002 – 2006. He was Deputy Prime Minister for Economics in the first government of Mikuláš Dzurinda in 1998 – 2002. In 1991 he became a Minister for Privatisation (1991 – 1992). Consequently in 1992 he co-founded and led economic think-tank MESA 10 (until 1998). In years 2006-10 and 2012-2016 he was a member of National Council of the Slovak Republic. In 2014 he was re-elected as president of MESA 10 think-tank and became a member of International Advisory Body for National Reform Council of Ukraine and VoxUkraine platform. Since February 2015 he was the general advisor to Minister of Finance of Ukraine and advisor to Minister of Economy o…

He started his career at VSŽ Košice as a programmer. Later he became a manager in various positions with responsibility for IT systems, many of which have been operating successfully to this day. After the extensive experience, he then decided to build new IT companies of Ness KDC in Košice and GlobalLogic, which targeted customers abroad. In this highly competitive environment, the company managed to create a working IT Valley model where he became Chairman of the Supervisory Board. His 20-year-lasting career allowed him to travel a lot, taught him about himself and about the great potential of his own country.

Ing. Lívia Vašáková, PhD., works in the energy sector as the Director of the Corporate Development and Public Relations Division for the ZSE Group. She is the former Director General of the Recovery Plan Section at the Government Office of the Slovak Republic, where she developed Slovakia’s recovery plan and implemented an efficient system for its execution, securing over one-third of the allocated funds and positioning Slovakia among the EU’s top-performing countries. From May 15, 2023, she served as Deputy Prime Minister for the Recovery and Resilience Plan and EU Funds in Ľudovít Ódor’s caretaker government, where she streamlined EU fund utilization and proposed system improvements. Previously, she led the Economic Analysis Section at…

Doc. PhDr. Michal Vašečka, PhD. is a sociologist, studied at Masaryk University. Since 2017 he is the Programme Director of the Bratislava Policy Institute in Bratislava. He focuses on issues of ethnicity, migration, populism, extremism and civil society. Previously, he worked at Masaryk University (2002-2017), Comenius University (2006-2009), Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts (2015-2023). Academically, he has been a visiting scholar at the New School University in New York (1996-1997), the University of London (1998), Georgetown University in Washington DC (2008-2009), the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (2015), as an ISGAP Scholar-In-Residence at Oxford University (2016), and at Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa College i…

Analyst and expert in public policy making. In 2017-2021, she headed the Implementation Unit of the Office of the Government of the Slovak Republic, which controlled the fulfillment of the principles of Value for Money in ministries. Prior to that, she worked as a fiscal and regulatory affairs manager at Philip Morris Slovakia. She worked for the investment bank Wood and Company or the US Embassy in Bratislava. She studied public finance at EUBA (University of Economics in Bratislava), but extended her education to Harvard University, Georgetown University in the USA, but also Vrije Universiteit in Brussels.