Global PB Boards

Oficina | Faro, Portugal

Simone holds a degree in economics from the University of Porto, a master’s in tourism and urban culture from Escola Superior de Educação Hotelaria e Turismo of the University of Algarve and a certificate in macroeconomics from Birkbeck University of London.

At Oficina, she has dedicated a significant part of her time to the design, implementation and evaluation of participatory democracy processes – including participatory budgeting, citizen’s panels, neighborhood tutors, and territorial and institutional planning instruments, such as social charters, local housing strategies and the design of statistical observatories.

Read more about Simone.

IODP Africa | Dakar, Senegal

Janice has 21 years of professional experience in development and international management, mainly within the United Nations system. She is currently program officer for the International Observatory for Participatory Democracy (IOPD) in Africa and a member of the global technical team for the Index on Participatory Democracy.

Learn more about Janice.

Democratic Society | Edinburgh, Scotland

Annie is a network and delivery manager for Democratic Society. In that capacity, she is Democratic Society’s lead for DEMOTEC, an EU-funded Horizon 2020 project that focuses on citizen engagement in European regional and urban policies.

Learn more about Annie.

OPENS | Novi Sad, Serbia

Aleksandra works as a senior consultant for OPENS, a Serbian NGO that runs school participatory budgeting in Novi Sad and advocates for young people to be equally involved in the decision-making process. Currently, her focus is on developing a youth participatory budgeting program and incorporating PB into local and national youth strategy documents.

Learn more about Aleksandra.

Argentine Association for Participatory Democracy | Buenos Aires, Argentina

Emiliano Arena holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Buenos Aires, and a specialization in management and control of public policies from the Latin American College of Social Sciences (FLACSO), Argentina. Currently, he is coordinator of monitoring and evaluation at the Center of Public Policy Implementation for Equity and Growth (CIPPEC).

Learn more about Emiliano.

The Poverty Alliance | Glasgow, Scotland

David joined the Poverty Alliance from the Scottish government’s community empowerment team, where he led its work on participatory budgeting and community development. Before that, David worked for the Scottish Community Development Centre ,working on ways power can be shared with citizens more equitably.

Learn more about David.

Nalotuesha Indigenous Women Organisation | Nairobi, Kenya

Eliza has over eight years of experience in implementing and coordinating participatory budgeting (PB) initiatives in Kenyan counties while working for Fahamu Africa. She is also a mentor for the People Powered Rising Star mentorship program and is a co-founder of the Nalotuesha Indigenous Women Organization, a platform that champions for the inclusion of indigenous women in governance.

Learn more about Eliza.

Participatory Budgeting Project | Boston, United States

Kayla started her career at the City of Boston's Youth Engagement and Employment Department, where she helped design and implement the first youth-led Participatory Budgeting process in the US. Since then, Kayla has been dedicated to improving economic development in communities of color and making government more accessible to immigrants and refugees. She currently serves as a program associate for the Participatory Budgeting Project, supporting training, consulting, and capacity-building services for government and schools.

Federal Agency for Civic Education | Königswinter, Germany

Svetlana Alenitskaya is a program manager at the German Federal Agency for Civic Education. She is responsible for the participatory projects and she has been coordinating the national PB Network since 2007.

The network currently consists of approximately 300 members and is available to German municipalities, interested civil society actors, and researchers. The network supports the work of practitioners and interested parties in PB by providing relevant information as well as facilitating the exchange of ideas and specific questions.

Within the framework of the network, national and international conferences on relevant topics are held annually. Thematic and demand-oriented working group topics for the past years for instance included evaluation, monitoring, and activating the target communities. In conjunction with the members of the network, the manual on providing feedback to the community by municipalities as well as the explanatory film on PB were developed.

lesbudgetsparticipatifs.fr | Paris, France

Antoine Bézard is a consultant at lesbudgetsparticipatifs.fr and an associated expert at the Fondation Jean-Jaurès, which publishes a national annual study about PBs in France.

As co-organizer and co-animator of the French Participatory Budgeting annual meetings, he has developed an important national network since 2016.

As a consultant, he works on studies for cities like Lyon, Rennes, and Grenoble. He also leads workshops and mobilization strategies.

As a speaker, he participates in roundtable discussions, and has spoken at hearings of the French National Assembly. He also teaches courses at the ENA, the national school for administration, in political science, administration, and urbanism subjects.

Association for communities participatory development | Poltava, Ukraine

Leonid Donos has been working to strengthen PB in Ukraine since 2015. As executive director of the Association for Communities Participatory Development he supports the implementation of PB processes in Ukrainian cities and communities. He also facilitates the exchange of experiences between countries within the framework of the International Forum for Participation Practitioners. As a board member of the international organization “Foundation for Freedom” he works on trust building and good government. He has a background in history, municipal management, urban planning and facilitation.

Since 2018, his main research topics have been participatory budgets and techniques for citizens’ participation in urban planning, participation for development of the social protection sphere, youth participation, participation of vulnerable and underrepresented groups. He has published several articles, essays and books on these topics. He collaborates actively in a number of projects with international organizations, such as the Council of Europe, Partnership for Local Economic Development and Democratic Governance Project (PLEDDG), and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.

African Alliance for Participatory Budgeting | Yaounde, Cameroun

Jules Dumas Nguebou is an Associate Professor at the University of Yaounde 2, Chairman of the Executive Board of the Cameroonian NGO ASSOAL, Chairman of the Initiative Committee of the National Network of Inhabitants, and Coordinator of the Inter-African Alliance of Participatory Budgeting, a regional network that advocates for participatory budgeting in several African countries. He is also the main promoter of the School of Governance and the Citizen Centre and governance technologies platforms. The author of several books and articles on civil society and democratic participation, Jules has won many awards, including the RFINet Africa Prize 2005. Finally, he is a consultant in the fields of governance, civil society, and human rights, working with partners and institutions such as the European Union and the World Bank, among others.

Social Equity and Participation Center | Chengdu, China

Ming is the founder of Participation Center, and a researcher at local Academy of Social Sciences in China. He completed his PhD in Public Policy at Beijing Normal University. His major research and action area is citizen engagement, inequality, and public budgeting. Since early 2000, he has been introducing Participatory Budgeting into China, and since 2008 has been engaged in PB policy research and making, capacity building, tools development, to promote and facilitate PB practices in the field.

The World and China Institute | Beijing, China

Xiang Hao is the Senior Analyst in the World and China Institute. She is also a research assistant at the Research Center for Contemporary China, Peking University. She is currently a Ph.D candidate at Peking University and was a visiting scholar at Columbia University and National Chengchi University. Since 2013, she participated in the implementation of PB projects in many different cities across China. (Beijing, Haikou, Nanchang, Soochow). These local governments take out a certain amount of funds from the public budget for people to vote on their own submit proposals. Her area of investigation concerns citizen participation in policymaking, with focus on government-led practices in budgeting, urban planning, and citizen initiatives. She also participated in Computer Assisted Telephone Interview program and several other face to face interview using GPS regional sampling in China.

DVotto Consultoria para Cidades | Porto Alegre, Brazil

With a master's degree in Social Science, Daniely develops sustainable urban projects for cities in partnership with National and International Governments, Organizations and Private Sector, focusing in open government, gender, and urban mobility. She worked for over 5 years as Urban Governance Manager at WRI Brasil, a non-profit organization that implements environmentally, socially and financially sustainable urban solutions to improve people’s quality of life in cities, Daniely also worked as the International Relations Officer for Porto Alegre Municipality for over 3 years, including on international networking for PB. She was also the VP of Shirley Ann Sullivan Educational Foundation for over 4 years.

Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul | Porto Alegre, Brazil

Tarson Núñez is a doctor in political science who is currently participating in a post-doctoral project at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. He works as a social researcher at the Department of Economy and Statistics at the Secretary of Planning of the State Government of Rio Grande do Sul. His experience with participatory democracy started as an activist and adviser for the urban social movements in Brazil in the early eighties. At the beginning of the nineties, he worked at the Porto Alegre Municipal government, as the head of the Planning Office, in charge of the Participatory Budgeting process in the city. At the beginning of the two-thousands, he was the director of the Urban and Regional Development Department of the state government, when they launched PB at the state level. In the same period, he worked as a volunteer in the first versions of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. His master's dissertation and his doctoral thesis both relate with the issue of participatory democracy, based on the experiences he and his team have lived in the last 25 year in his country. His post-doctoral research is a case study about the impact of the social movements in the development of our cities.

Elgeyo Marakwet County Government | Eldoret, Kenya

John has served for more than a decade in the public sector as an Economist. He has worked with communities and regional local governments in Kenya to improve people’s livelihoods through relevant and responsive governance approaches. Currently, he is the Director of Economic Planning and Budgeting and the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Point of Contact for Elgeyo Marakwet County, Kenya which is one of the sub-nationals governments participating in the OGP Local Program. He is responsible for economic planning, policy formulation, and budget management processes. Additionally, he coordinates the institutionalization of emerging practices such as participatory budgeting on behalf of the county government. His passion to integrate citizen voices and incorporate best practices to inform governance processes was born of his desire to institute acceptable, open, participatory, inclusive and sustainable culture in the development process in Kenya. He holds a Master's degree in Development Economics (International Development Studies) from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Japan and a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Moi University, Kenya, amongst other qualifications.

Montréal Urban Ecology Center | Montréal, Canada

Anne Gauthier has a Master's degree in Management of Social Innovations from HEC Montréal, where she became interested in collective organizations as tools for social-economic development. Recently, she acted as a project manager at Espaces temps where she accompanied organizations and public institutions to carry out collective and sustainable projects in fields as varied as planning, cooperation, and Inuit entrepreneurship. As a committed leader, Anne actively contributes to Changer de cap, a project to accelerate the ecological transition in Quebec’s communities. She joined the Centre d’écologie urbaine de Montréal to leverage her strengths by facilitating collective discussions and public participation for the benefit of the design and implementation of participatory budgeting processes.

UIC Great Cities Institute | Chicago, USA

Thea Crum is Associate Director of the Neighborhoods Initiative at the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she designs programs, raises funds, leads projects, and coordinates with community partners. Leading the Participatory Budgeting Chicago Initiative since 2012, she has worked to implement and expand PB with elected officials and in public schools. She has over 15 years of experience in community development, capacity building, and civic engagement. She regularly gives presentations on PB and community development, guest lectures graduate courses, and publishes research and practitioner reports. In 2016, she presented on Advanced Participatory Budgeting at the Second White House convening on PB in the United States. She has co-authored “Youth Citizenship in Action: Evaluation of PB in Schools Pilot” (2018), “Democratizing Tax Increment Financing Funds through PB” (2016) and “The Civics of Community Development: PB in Chicago” (2015) among other reports. She is a member of the North American Participatory Budgeting Research Board (2014-present). She holds a Master of Urban Planning and Policy from the University of Illinois Chicago (2011).

Independent Consultant | Antananarivo, Madagascar

Since 2008, Hajarivony has promoted Participatory Budgeting in Madagascar with the objective of improving the management of mining revenues in poor areas. Since 2010, he has been advising the World Bank Group on transparency, participation, and accountability.

Hajarivony’s knowledge of fiscal decentralization and citizen engagement challenges was mainly gained from piloting tax collection operations in the field. Currently, he is advising donors and governments on budget transparency and citizen engagement in Madagascar, Comoros, and Morocco. He holds a Master’s Degrees in Trade and International Management. He is fluent in French, English, and Malagasy and he has a basic