We pride ourselves on having a young, talented and transnational team that works hard to ensure European alternatives is a continuous success story. Meet the team of staff behind our organization.
Meet the team
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Sharlen Sezestre
Coordinatrice du projet
Sharlen Sezestre, est une militante engagée depuis l’âge de 13 ans dans des associations féministes de lutte contre les violences faites aux femmes et dans des groupes d’aide aux demandeurs d’asile. Après avoir obtenu un Master en Droits de l’Homme, elle a travaillé comme juriste à France Terre d’Asile, puis comme Chargée de plaidoyer international au Planning Familial (association féministe française de promotion de la santé et des droits sexuels et reproductifs). Elle a également été membre du Conseil Politique du Black Feminist Fund pendant les 6 dernières années, un fonds visant à soutenir le financement d’organisations féministes noires dans une perspective antiraciste et décoloniale. Aujourd’hui, elle est coordinatrice du projet The Fierce à European Alternatives. -
Noemi Pittalà
Communications assistant
Noemi Pittalà is a multidisciplinary artivist and cultural professional from Palermo, working at the intersection of art and social inclusion. With a background in visual arts and theatre, she has specialized in communications within the cultural sector, focusing on creating connections and fostering community engagement. Her work emphasizes radical inclusion, collective care, and active youth participation. As a Pop The Vote Changemaker in the 2024 European election promotion campaign by Culture Action Europe, she actively engages in fostering civic participation. Following this project, Noemi founded 800V, an artivism initiative aimed at empowering young people in Southern Italy. She is based in Brussels.
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Irene Alonso Toucido
Project manager
Irene is the project manager of the Democratic Odyssey, a collaborative and decentralised initiative aiming at institutionalizing a peoples’ assembly and participatory ecosystem in Europe.
As a sociologist, Irene has a profound professional and personal interest in the commons, citizen participation and ecofeminism. She is particularly fascinated by the connections between degrowth, community and ancestral wisdoms.
Of nomadic nature, Irene’s work is driven by a commitment to fostering inclusive and sustainable societies. She has contributed to numerous projects and international forums, advocating for policies that empower communities. Her diverse experience and interdisciplinary approach enable her to connect theoretical concepts with practical applications, making her a bridge for grounding the Democratic Odyssey project.
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Jacc Griffiths
Research assistant
Jacc is from Wales and today lives in Paris. They are currently working on the Critical ChangeLabs project. Their background is in linguistics & pedagogy, and they are specialized in discourse analysis, critical sociolinguistics and semiotics.
They created and taught an English language course entitled Lost in Translation, which seeks to critically engage with the status of English as a lingua franca, through deconstructing the capitalist & colonialist notions of “proper English” and recognizing the evolution of World Englishes.
In 2023, they wrote their Master’s thesis on the subject of discourse-spatial production in the global Collages Féminicides movement, studying how transpatial, feminist activist networks grow horizontally through physical-digital discursive interaction.
They are fascinated by intersecting ecosystems, rhizome-spaces, interdiscourse networks, and all things etymology.
They are also a member of the Paris-based intersectional feminist writing group Le Phare Collectif.
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Niccolò Milanese
Director
Niccolò Milanese is a poet and one of the founding directors of European Alternatives. He fosters the development of the organisation, its staff and the ecosystem around European Alternatives and is the focal point for the ‘learn’ stream of our work.
He is currently a fellow of BI-Europe in Venice. In addition to longstanding work on transnationalism and political imaginaries, his current interests are in the planetary politics of desire, democratic education and fluid identities. His latest book is ‘Illiberal Democracies in Europe: An Authoritarian response to the crisis of liberalism’ available freely here.
He was previously a Europe’s Futures Fellow at IWM, Vienna, a visiting fellow at PUC Rio-De Janeiro, at UNAM Mexico, and at EUI School of Transnational Governance in Florence. He has been involved in founding numerous civil society initiatives and magazines in Europe and across the Mediterranean. He was educated in Cambridge, Siena and Paris.
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Marta Cillero
Studio Rizoma Director & Communications Director
Marta Cillero is the managing director at Fondazione Studio Rizoma (Palermo) and communications manager. She graduated in Media Studies, Journalism and Communication (Madrid, Istanbul and Chicago) and has a master degree in Gender Studies (Rome). She has published several articles and research reports about gender violence in Mediterranean countries.
She is a member of the executive board and project manager at Chayn Italia, an award-winning organisation based in Italy, Pakistan, India and the UK helping women experiencing abuse and gender violence through open and free multilingual resources on online safety.
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Gabriela Ortiz Soto
Berlin Hub Coordinator
Gabriela Ortiz holds a law degree from the Universidad Catolica in Peru and a Master’s degree in Labor Policies and Globalization from the Global Labour University in Berlin, specializing in labor law, decent work, migration, gender equality and diversity. She wrote her Master’s thesis on the issue of transnational mobility of domestic workers using a legal and intersectional approach.
Gabriela joined European Alternatives’ Berlin Hub in June 2023. Prior to that, she gained experience in union organizing, mapping strategies and tools for Spanish-speaking migrant domestic workers in Washington D.C. She also had a short but enriching internship experience in Brussels conducting lobbying and labor relations research.
In addition to her job as Berlin Hub Coordinator of the School of Transnational Organizing, Gabriela is working on a voluntary basis on the creation and growth of the grassroots organizing community “Berlin Worker Center” to connect and support different workers’ struggles and build power.
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Camilo Alvarez Garrido
Creations & Publications Assistant
I’m an activist and researcher from Chile. I moved to Germany in 2019 to pursue a Master’s in Global Studies. Since 2020, I have been actively involved in the migrant labor struggle in Berlin, particularly in the organisation of delivery riders with the Gorillas Workers’ Collective and its network, as well as in the construction of transectorial alliance between labor, housing and climate activists through the Make Amazon Pay campaign.
Alongside European Alternatives’ Berlin Hub and the School of Transnational Organizing, I also work as a research assistant at the Humboldt University Institute of European Ethnology together with the Berlin Institute for Migration and Integration Research. My personal research is currently focused on the role of care practices in enabling intersectional solidarity building within organised spaces of resistance. I believe the most important task at hand in political organising is forging organisational cultures capable of attending to the complex diversity of our human needs, so as to allow us to pool our capacities together in more effective and sustainable ways.
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Viktoria Kostova
Project coordinator
Viktoria Kostova has a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and just finished her Master’s degree in Management of Creative Industries and Cultural Organizations in Sofia, Bulgaria. She has worked for different NGOs in the sphere of culture and education locally and internationally, predominantly in Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Tenerife, Sweden, UK and the USA.
She is interested in sustainability in the arts, activism, youth engagement and audience development.
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Csenge Schneider-Lonhart
Project coordinator
Csenge is the Local Coordinator of the TransEuropa Festival, taking place in Cluj this year. She was born in 1998 in Budapest. In 2022 she finished her Master’s degree in Contemporary Theatre at the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj Napoca, Faculty of Theatre and Film. She has volunteered at various festivals, such as the TESZT Festival in Timișoara, the Interferences Festival and the Khetane festival in Cluj .
She was one of the founders of the Questioning Reality Festival, the first research festival in Cluj-Napoca, organised around the topic of the Smart City concept of Cluj. The QR project debates, analyses, and dissects, together with the local community, the hidden problems of a smart city.
She is currently collaborating with Casa Tranzit, where she is involved in projects that address interaction and care for children. She is part of the movement Social Housing NOW!, which is a local movement for public housing and housing justice.
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Gabriela Siegel
Grassroots Community Manager
Gabriela was an intern at the Berlin Hub of European Alternatives, working on the School of Transnational Organizing‘s education and training programs for migrant workers, East German & Eastern European activists, as well as youth activists and campaigners from across Europe.
She has almost ten years of experience in direct legal services, community organising, and policy work with refugee and immigrant communities, both in Lebanon and the US. Gabriela worked in the US as a movement lawyer, representing low-income undocumented individuals, first in their immigration cases and later on employment and labour matters. She also worked on designing and implementing benefits and policies to support low-income immigrants in New York State. She is currently completing a master’s programme through the Global Labour University on Labour Policies and Globalisation.
Since April 2023, Gabriela has transitioned into her new role as Grassroots Community Manager building, holding, and caring for our community and network in Berlin and across Europe.
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Billie Dibb
Project Witch and Logistics Maestra
Billie works on and is the focal point too the ‘imagination’ projects of European Alternatives, and helps in the logistics of the Paris Office.
Billie works on and is the focal point too the ‘imagination’ projects of European Alternatives, and helps in the logistics of the Paris Office. They have an academic background in International Politics, with a focus on gendered nationalism and big data. They also have experience within the asylum & migration sector across the UK & France, covering roles in event management, graphics & communications, campaigning, and coordination.
Billie created and runs an event in Paris, ‘La Voisin’, an exhbo-cum-party creating a space for feminist thought and artistic expression. Billie is passionate about, and dabbles in, the creative possibilities of new technologies in the arts and how they can facilitate social change. -
Jana Ahlers
Grassroots Education Manager
Jana is Grassroots Education Manager at European Alternatives, working within the School of Transnational Organizing. She is dedicated to creating transformative learning spaces and building capacity to collaboratively strategize for system change.
With a background in education, she has a passion for critical and experiential pedagogy and research interest in how social movements learn and engage in counter-hegemonic knowledge production.
As a social and climate justice organizer and activist she has experience and a wide network across the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, the UK, and Germany.
Most recently, she coordinated the programme of the People’s Summit for Climate Justice in Glasgow. Working with the COP26 Coalition, she draws on capacity organizing with a wide range of civil society groups, ranging from environment and development NGOs, to grassroots community campaigns, youth groups, indigenous groups, and migrant and racial justice networks.
Outside of EA, Jana is a Berlin-based grassroots organizer and activist, steadily pushing towards new imaginaries and strategic wins by the people.
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Myriam Zekagh
Project coordinator
Myriam Zekagh coordinates EA’s programmes focused on youth and social movements, and monitors the impact of EA’s activities through monitoring, evaluation and learning.
Her work focuses on developing and evaluating projects with high social impact, engaging with local activists, civil society organisations and local authorities to create strong and long-lasting connections. She has lived and worked in and outside of Europe, most notably in Germany and North Africa.
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Ophélie Masson
Deputy director
Ophélie coordinates the programmes that aim at developing and implementing sustainable tools of participative democracy such as citizens assemblies and ECIs. She also co-coordinates the Citizens Take Over Europe coalition.
She focuses on defining new common narratives for citizens and residents of Europe who wish to enhance their political participation through innovative processes. As such, she is deeply involved in expanding European Alternatives partnerships with CSOs and movements that focus on training key individuals who develop and replicate diverse experimental citizens assemblies methodologies.
She has created and led campaigns at EU level, engaging with actors ranging from grassroots organisations to the European institutions.
Ophélie is also an LGBTQI activist and co-chair of the Board of IGLYO. She is also a Board Member of EUMANS, an organisation aiming at promoting civic participation through various instruments such as citizens assemblies, ECIs and petitions.
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Martin Pairet
Berlin Hub Finances & Administration Assistant
Martin was the Network Manager of European Alternatives for five years until 2020. In the last years he became a French baker. In the Berlin Hub he was in charge of the development of the transnational community and network of the organisation.
Martin has been working in the non-profit sector for more than eight years with experience in membership development, communications and fundraising in international organisations such as IFOAM – Organics International and Oxfam France. He is also engaged as a member of SOS Méditerranée, a civic European organisation for the rescue of people in distress in the Mediterranean and of MitOst, an international network of cultural actors and active citizens. He has a strong interest on how activists and civil society organisations are articulating and organising themselves to influence European politics both at the grassroots and at the institutional level.
Since April 2023, Martin is supporting the team again as Berlin Hub Finances & Administration Assistant.
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Ségolène Pruvot
Director
Ségolène Pruvot is a Director of European Alternatives. Ségolène is a Doctor in Urban Sociology. In the course of her academic career and professional life, she specialised in the exploration of the intersection between arts, the city and social change. She trained as a political scientist and urban planner in France, the UK, and Germany.
Segolene has developed extensive experience in designing and implementing transnational participative cultural programmes, activists transnational networking and collaborative research.