Milena Lazarević

Milena Lazarević is one of the founders and Programme Director at the European Policy Centre (CEP), independent, non-profit think-tank based in Belgrade, Serbia. As the Programme Director, she is in charge of the overall programmatic strategy of CEP as well as developing and managing the quality assurance system and processes within the organisation. She also takes the lead on numerous good governance related projects implemented by CEP. Milena is a proven expert in the field of public administration reform, in Serbia and in the Western Balkan region. Between May 2014 and March 2015, in addition to her work in CEP, she also acted as the Special Adviser to the Serbian Deputy Prime Minister in charge of public administration reform. As a consultant, she has worked for SIGMA/OECD, Regional School for Public Administration (ReSPA), the World Bank and several major international consultancy companies. Before co-founding CEP, she worked for almost six years as a civil servant in the Serbian administration, dealing with public administration reform and administrative capacities for EU accession, first in the EU Integration Office of the Serbian Government (SEIO) and later in the Ministry of Public Administration. As a Soros scholar, Milena obtained her BA degree in European Studies and International Relations magna cum laudae at the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG), after which she completed with honors an advanced MA programme in European studies at the College of Europe, on a King Baudouin Foundation scholarship. She later also graduated from the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Serbia and obtained an MA in European Administrative Law at the Law Faculty of the Belgrade University. She speaks fluently English, French, Italian and Bulgarian and has basic knowledge of German. She is married and mother of two children.