Ariana Vela, MBA, IPMA/A is one of the most recognized experts in European Union funds, public procurement, and strategic planning in Croatia and the wider region. With more than 20 years of experience, she has participated in the preparation and implementation of over 500 EU grant-funded projects, including some of Croatia’s largest infrastructure projects, such as the Road Connectivity with Southern Dalmatia project, better known as the Pelješac Bridge.
She is the founder and CEO of AVELANT Ltd., Director of the EU PROJEKTI Educational Institution, and a mentor in training programs focused on EU funds, public procurement, and project management. She conceived and launched Croatia’s first EU funds portal, euprojekti.info, and authored Management of ESI Funds, one of the first professional manuals on the preparation and implementation of projects financed through the European Structural and Investment Funds.
Her expertise includes resolving complex issues related to infrastructure project implementation, public procurement irregularities, strategic planning, and advising EU fund beneficiaries. In her work, she combines consulting experience, extensive knowledge of legal, institutional, and financial frameworks, and a practical approach to project implementation.
She holds an MBA in Management, is certified at the IPMA Level A standard, is a certified public procurement trainer, and serves as an external expert for both international and national institutions. At AVELANT, she is responsible for the company’s strategic management, the development of the consulting team, the introduction of innovations, and the leadership of major projects.
Drago Kos is the Dean and Secretary-General of the International Anti-Corruption Academy in Vienna and the Chair of the OECD Istanbul Anti-Corruption Action Plan. From 2014 to 2022, he was the Chair of the OECD Working Group on Bribery in International Business Transactions. In recent years, he has been a member of the International Anti-Corruption Advisory Board (IACAB) in Ukraine and a Co-Chair and Member of the Defence Corruption Monitoring Committee (NAKO) in Ukraine. Between 2011 and 2015, he served as International Commissioner and Chair of the Joint Independent Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (MEC) in Afghanistan. Between 2003 and 2011, he was President of the Council of Europe Group of States against Corruption (GRECO). In his native Slovenia, Drago Kos was the first President of the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption and Head of the Working Group for the Development of the Slovenian Guidelines on Corporate Integrity.
Dr. Sc. Ema Menđušić Škugor lawyer with more than 10 years of experience in consulting on managing legal and compliance risks in complex business environments. Trenutno je Co-Managing Partner i voditeljica Odjela za pravo reguliranih industrija u odvjetničkom društvu DTB.
In his work, he focuses on AI, cyber security and digital regulation, with an emphasis on translating regulatory requirements into practical solutions applicable in everyday business. He regularly advises clients from various industries on compliance with the new EU regulatory framework, including the Artificial Intelligence Act and related regulations.
In addition to consulting work, he teaches at the Algebra University’s MBA program and executive programs in the areas of digital law, privacy and cyber security. It also holds in-house workshops and trainings for legal, compliance and business teams, with an emphasis on the gap between regulatory requirements and their actual application in practice.
Hana Horak, Ph.D. professor with a permanent position at the Department of Business Law at the Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb. Na toj instituciji zaposlena je od 1992. godine, gdje izvodi nastavu iz trgovačkog prava, prava međunarodne trgovine, europskog tržišnog prava i europskog prava društava te sudjeluje u izvođenju nastave na poslijediplomskim studijima iz područja korporativnog upravljanja i europskog prava. Obnašala je dužnost pročelnice Katedre za poslovno pravo u tri mandata te je voditeljica poslijediplomskog specijalističkog studija „Pravni i ekonomski okvir poslovanja u Europskoj uniji”.
She is the editor-in-chief of the international scientific journal Inter EU Law East, included in the Web of Science, and a member of the editorial board of the European Company Case Law journal. He is active in national and international professional organizations and advises companies in the field of company law and corporate governance, sustainability and ESG.
Since 2026, she has served as the President of the Supervisory Board of Hanza Media.
Ivica Budimir is a civil engineer by profession. He graduated from the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Split in 1997, and has worked in road construction his entire career. He started it at the Croatian Institute of Civil Engineering (IGH), continued it in the quality control laboratory at Strabag and at Konstruktor, and then at Jadrankamen. 14 years ago, he was employed by the Croatian branch of the French construction company Colas, where he successfully managed its profit center for the southern part of the country. Among other things, he worked on the design of some sections of motorways, and for a time he taught a course on construction site organization at the Polytechnic University of Split. In February 2025, he took over the top position at Croatian Roads, that of President of the Management Board.
She is the President of the Management Board of GrECo Specialty GmbH, headquartered in Vienna, a company owned by the GrECo Group, specialized and focused exclusively on the insurance and reinsurance of specific industries, such as energy, construction, transport and logistics, aviation and financial institutions. In her position, she is responsible for business development in 21 countries in Central and South-Eastern Europe, including Croatia. Among other things, she is responsible for managing a premium of 1 billion euros, a revenue of more than 65 million euros and a team of 400 people.
Her career was anything but ordinary. A graduate in aviation engineering and professional pilot, she successfully founded and ran the first Croatian business airline, after which she held leading roles in the insurance sector. She came to GrECo from the position of president of the Marsh Management Board McLennan Croatia, where in the five years since she took the top position, she has increased revenues fourfold, developed reinsurance as part of the business and turned the portfolio around so that more than 80% of it was made up of companies from the domestic market. Iva is aShe is the recipient of the CROMA Manager of the Year Award 2023 in the small business category.
is a graduate in law, employed as the Company Secretary of Atlantic Grupa dd with basic responsibilities in the field of corporate governance. Her responsibilities include taking care of the organization of work and mutual coordination of the work of the Management Board, Supervisory Board and General Assembly of the Company, their auxiliary bodies, the compliance of the company’s internal acts, legal support of the Company’s activities in the field of capital markets and participation in the legal aspect of the preparation and implementation of Atlantic Grupa’s acquisition activities. She joined Atlantic in 2006, immediately before its IPO, and has been actively involved in the entire development of Atlantic Grupa in the field of corporate governance and the capital market to date. Before Atlantic, she spent three years in law practice working in the field of commercial and civil law, during which time she passed the bar exam. She has completed a number of professional training courses in Croatia, the United Kingdom and the United States in the field of corporate governance, capital markets and management. She is a member of the ICC Croatia Commission for Commercial Law and Practice.
Mag. iur. Ljiljana Hrastinski Jurčec is a retired judge of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia. Over forty years of judicial work, she has gained exceptionally rich experience in all branches of law, especially in the field of commercial, enforcement and bankruptcy law. During her work in the judiciary, she served as a judge of the Civil Department of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Croatia and as a judge of the High Commercial Court of the Republic of Croatia, where she was at certain times the president of the Department responsible for commercial disputes and the Department for monitoring and supervision of case law. She graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Osijek, passed the bar exam and attended the postgraduate study program in Business Law and Transactions. She actively participated in the work of numerous judicial and professional bodies, including the Judicial Council of Commercial Courts, the Program Council of the Judicial Academy and a number of working groups of the Ministry of Justice for the development and amendment of the legislative framework. She was also the president of the Commission for taking bankruptcy and management exams and a member of the Commission for taking notary exams. It is on the list of arbitrators of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce. He is a certified mediator. She is the author of several professional papers and publications in the field of enforcement and bankruptcy law, and a long-time manager of education and professional workshops for judges and judicial trainees. As an associate at Codupo doo, she is responsible for giving opinions and solving legal issues, with a special focus on the interpretation and application of regulations, the regulatory framework and legal support in complex legal and compliance issues.
Zvonimir Jukić is the Deputy President of the State Commission for the Control of Public Procurement Procedures (DKOM) and the President of the Council in which he decides on appeals in public procurement, concessions and public-private partnership procedures and decides on the legality of procedures, actions, omissions and decisions as individual acts adopted in public procurement, concessions and public-private partnership procedures.
He is a lawyer from Zagreb who has passed the bar exam. In his previous career, he worked as a law trainee and in the state administration system, within the Government Office for Public Procurement, i.e. the Ministry of Economy, Directorate for the Public Procurement System. During his work in the state administration system, he participated in the drafting of legal and subordinate legislation in the field of public procurement and was a member of the working group responsible for Chapter V – Public Procurement.
He also worked at Narodne novine dd as the Head of the Legal Education and Legal Library Editorial Department and was a member of the working group for the creation and improvement of the Electronic Public Procurement Classifieds (EOJN RH).
He is a public procurement trainer and regularly participates in professional conferences and workshops on public procurement in the country and abroad.
Until recently, Vedrana Jelušić Kašić was a member of the Management Board of Privredna banka Zagreb, since the end of February this year she is an advisor to VUB Bank for corporate operations in Slovakia, also a member of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group.
Until February 2026, as a member of the Management Board of PBZ, she was responsible for corporate activities for large and medium-sized enterprises and for the area of investment banking. She was also the President of the Supervisory Board of PBZ Leasing doo and a member of the Supervisory Board of the Zagreb Stock Exchange dd.
Ms. Jelušić Kašić was a partner responsible for financial advisory at Deloitte Croatia from 2018 to 2021. Her work included professional advisory in the areas of corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and financial restructuring. She was also the Head of Corporate Governance and led the Private Sector Initiative for the Adria region. Vedrana Jelušić Kašić worked for more than 20 years at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), from 1998 to 2018, where she was Country Director for Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, and Slovakia. She was also responsible for the EBRD’s activities in the agribusiness, food and beverage, and retail sectors in 12 countries in Southeastern Europe from 2007 to 2013, and was also a non-executive director of the supervisory boards of several leading private companies in Southeastern Europe. Vedrana Jelušić Kašić gained her initial business experience at Raiffeisen Bank in Croatia, Merrill Lynch Private Client Group in the USA, the Croatian National Bank and Monte Titoli in Italy. Vedrana Jelušić Kašić earned a Master of Science degree in International Economics and Finance from Brandeis University in the USA, and a Bachelor of Economics degree from the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb, and is also the recipient of two Rector’s Awards. She completed her education in international finance at the Wirtschaftsuniversität and Institut für Wirtschaftswissenschaften in Vienna and holds a Non-Executive Director’s Diploma from the Financial Times in London. Vedrana was a member of the advisory councils of the President of the Republic of Croatia for two Croatian presidents (2018-2019 and 2020-2021). The Croatian Business Magazine has listed her among the 10 most powerful businesswomen in Croatia five times and the Croatian Women’s Network has listed her among the most influential businesswomen for 2020.
Miralem Mašić is an expert in People Analytics, Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) and decision making, with more than 20 years of experience working in regional companies and global corporations. Throughout his career, he has worked to understand what organizations often fail to see in time – how decisions actually travel through the system, where ownership is lost and why even good strategies often do not produce the expected results. He holds two master’s degrees from the United Kingdom and is the co-author of the Rootshift methodology, an approach that connects decision making, organizational dynamics and execution into one functional system. Through lectures, workshops and his own texts, he deals with topics that lie at the intersection of data, human behavior and real organizational power.