Having involved in the export trade of fruit, he has been successfully operating in the livestock sector since 2004.
A founding member of the SEK, laid the foundations for PASEGES in 2011 where he was elected on its board
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Geert Wilms studied Horticulture at Wageningen University and Business Administration at Open University. For more than 20 years Geert has been director of Agricultural Innovation Brabant (LIB), and he is consultant at Royal Haskoning DHV.
LIB is a partnership of Province North-Brabant and farmers organization ZLTO. Each year more than 30 innovative projects are initiated and supported, with the participation of hundreds of (agricultural) businesses. Several workshops are organized and guided. Geert is directly accountable to the President of ZLTO and regional Minister of agriculture in North-Brabant. One project he started and is very proud of: “Smart irrigation in agriculture; 3.000 farmers participating with 60.000 hectares, and 25% gain of efficiency in water use”.
Geert Wilms also is a speaker, discussion leader and initiator of cooperation in different regions in Europe. He is/was involved in more than 15 European funded projects, for example Water management, Water conservation, Agrispin, Eurodairy, EU-PIG and STRING.
Professor Vlachos is the Director of the Laboratory of Statistics and Quantitative Analysis Methods, Logistics and Supply Chain Management (LASCM) of the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh), Greece.
He conducts research and consulting in the fields of supply chain management, logistics, applied operational research, combined transport systems management, business restructuring and strategy development. He has participated in more than 60 research projects (in 15 of them as a principal investigator) in the field of Supply Chain Management, and he has co-authored the respective technical reports.
He has published more than 200 papers in scientific journals, conference proceedings and book chapters. He has participated as a consultant or expert in numerous projects funded by public and private organizations. He is President of the Greek Association of Supply Chain Management (EELBE).
Dr. Philip Papadopoulos holds a PhD from London School of Economics and is currently the Director of the Strategic Project Management Office of the American Farm School (AFS). In this capacity he is responsible for the Agrifood Entrepreneurship Centres run by AFS in the cities of Thessaloniki and Kalamata, and oversees training and consultancy projects in over thirty locations throughout Greece. Building and managing multi-actor alliances between research institutes, civil society institutions and the real economy is one of his core activities.
His fields of interest include Consumer Behavior related to the Mediterranean Diet, Alternative Tourism, Food Anthropology, Entrepreneurship, E-commerce, Organizational Culture & Climate, Leadership and Management, including motivation and performance management.
Charalambos Kasimis is a Professor at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development of the Agricultural University of Athens. In March 2015, he was appointed as Secretary General of Agricultural Policy and Management of European Funds of the Ministry of Rural Development and Food, in charge of CAP, Rural Development and Fisheries Development Programmes of Greece as well as International Relations. He completed his term in office in July 2019.
He has served as the Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development (2013-2014) and as the Director of the Postgraduate Studies MSc. Programme “Integrated Rural Development and Management of Rural Space” (2010-2014). Between September 2014 and March 2015, he was appointed as Deputy Rector of the Agricultural University of Athens. In the period 1986-2003 he served as a member of staff at the Department of Economics of the University of Patras and between 1995 and 2000 as the Director of the Institute of Urban and Rural Sociology at the National Centre for Social Research. For a number of years, he served as a member of the Executive Committee of the European Society for Rural Sociology and between 2013 and 2015 as President.
His academic interests focus on issues of rural transformation and development in Greece, the Balkans and the Mediterranean region and more particularly on family farming, employment and rural community change. Migration and, more precisely, the implications of international migration on rural regions have become one of his main research topics in the past years. In the crisis years he dealt with the study of the implications of the economic crisis upon the rural areas and the ‘return to the land’ movement in Greece.
Since 2016 Charalampos Kasimis is Vice President and member of the Governing Board of the International Center for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (CIHEAM).
Between 2018 -2019 he served as Executive Board member of the Organisation “Enterprise Greece”.
Ms Siwarde J. Sap is a result-oriented policy shaper and maker who is driven by knowledge, new ideas and social relevance. At a strategic and tactical level, she contributes to the formulation of policies and naturally makes an efficient translation into practice using design thinking methods. In her favorite role as a catalyst, she interacts transparently with participating parties at different levels and keeps an eye on conflicting interests.
Since 2010, she holds the position of Senior Advisor Economic Policy Affairs at the Netherlands Embassy in Greece. Her focus lies on regional geopolitics, euro economic policy affairs, financial services, agrifood systems, energy and logistics.
Ms Sap holds a Master’s degree in Dutch Civil law, with a specialization in European law, from Leiden University and has fulfilled senior management positions at leading companies. She is fluent in several languages including Greek.
Ms Sap is Vice Chair of the Balkans & Black Sea Cooperation Forum Steering Committee and former vice chair of the Economic & Commercial Diplomats Club in Greece. As co-initiator of the Balkans & Black Sea Cooperation Forum and its spin-off activities, she focuses on international and institutional affairs thereby giving a continuous impulse to the implementation and the ongoing development of this growing international network.
Nikos Thymakis born in Athens in 1971 and hails from Naoussa and Chania. He is Agronomist and is engaged in the Floriculture and Gardening since 1998. He has done studies and construction for over 200 projects. Among other things, he deals with the management of herb farms in terms of organic farming.
He has participated representing Greece in International Floriculture and Horticulture events, as in IGM Tulln (Austria, 2007) and the Taipei Flora Expo (Taiwan, 2010-2011) where he got the 6th place among 31 entries, the better for European country. He was the Project Manager of the Greek participation in Floriade (Netherlands 2012) with the group set up for this purpose, SYNERGIA “Hellenic Garden Team”. For all his activity , the Hellenic Plant Material Exporters Association (HEPMEA) announced him Honorary President. He participated for Greece in IHK Goyang (Korea 2016) with the Hellenic Garden “Anthestiria” along with the award-winning Landscape Architect Konstantina Stara and in 2017 , with Hellenic Garden “ Aegean Miracle-the Island of Skyros”
Within partnerships abroad, he worked in Qatar (2012) to palm -management projects and Halki (Princess Island-Constantinoupolis) (2013-2016) for the construction of the “thematic garden” at the Halki Theological School, applying the study of Neapolis University of Paphos.
He was the Director of the Kifissia Flower Show from 2005-2012, boosting the international profile and the dimension of environmental education. A plurality of editorial content in newspapers and magazines as well as television hits on gardening and gardening shows in the last decade.
He is the co-founder of GREEKPALMSOCIETY struggling for the dissemination and preservation of the Cretan Date Palm (Phoenix theophrasti) and member of EUNOPS (European Network of Palm Scientists).
From October 2015 and after a long career in the municipalities of Halandri and Kifissia and the body for the Park of Environmental Awareness “Antonis Tritsis” he works to the Planning and Development Office Resources of the Municipality of Maroussi, with focus on the European Programmes and International Relations.
Since October 2016 he is the Landscape consultant of the Rejuvanation of Ionian Village Campus gardens (Ileia, Greece) .
As a Landscape Consultant is convinced that the “landscaping” is a “tool” of cultural, tourism -and not only- to promote our country. In particular, it enhances the dynamics of sustainable and self-sustaining “Hellenic Garden” worldwide with his activities. He is a member of several voluntary organizations concerned with the green and the environment.
Currently he is Senior Adviser to the Ministry of Rural Development and Food (Ministers Office) and President to the Institute of Agronomic Sciences.
Principal Officer Gregory W. Pfleger, Jr., a career member of the Foreign Service, arrived in Thessaloniki in August 2018.
Prior to Thessaloniki, Mr. Pfleger most recently served as Director for Baltic and Eastern European Affairs at the National Security Council under both the Obama and Trump administrations. Since joining the State Department in 2006, he has also served in Dushanbe, Tajikistan; Shanghai, China; as Special Assistant in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor; and in Kyiv, Ukraine. Prior to joining the Foreign Service Mr. Pfleger served in the Peace Corps in Russia (2000-2002).
Mr. Pfleger speaks Greek and Russian, and has studied the Ukrainian and Chinese languages. He graduated from Rice University with degrees in History, Political Science, and Policy Studies, and from the London School of Economics in 2004 with an MSc in Russian and Post-Soviet Studies.