European Social Services Conference
Monika Büning studied Political Science at the University of Münster and Comparative Central Studies at the Europa University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). Monika has been working on European topics for over seventeen years. She is the Head of International Department at the German Association for Public and Private Welfare since May 2020.
Gerard Brophy is Chief Social Worker in Tusla, Ireland’s Child and Family Agency who lead in social services for child protection in Ireland. Gerard has spent over 20 years as a qualified social worker working in child and family services. He has worked across areas of child protection, children in care and fostering
Sarah Kups is an economist in the Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. She has worked on a number of policy areas including youth employment and social policy, social services and migration. Sarah holds a PhD in Policy Analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School.
Anja Gargulla represents the Ministry of Labour, Health, Social and Family Affairs and Integration, Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (Germany), the host of this year´s European Social Services Conference. Since joining the Ministry in 2018 she has been active in labour market policy with special attention to employment and social inclusion programmes for people furthest from the labour market. She previously worked in the field of international and European co-operation for the Senate of Hamburg for more than 10 years.
Stathis Marinos has wide experience in EU-funded projects in the domain of heath informatics, where he has worked as a researcher. He has also worked as a freelance software developer for several domains including insurance, health, and social protection. He has sound experience in a variety of development tools/ technologies. Since 2016 he has worked as project and technical manager for several national social protection projects in Greece such as Guaranteed Minimum Income platform (2016); Social dividend (2017); Electricity social tariff (2017); National mechanism for monitoring, coordination, and evaluation of policies for social inclusion (2017); and the integrated platform for the public authority of social benefits and social solidarity (2018).
A senior IT consultant at the World Bank since 2018, he is responsible for the design of the Case Management Information System for Reddito di Cittadinanza (GePI)-the Italian Guaranteed Minimum Income, and since 2020 he is the designer and product owner of the Case Compass platform which is part of the World Bank initiative for a case management toolbox.
He received the Diploma in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece in 1998 and his Masters in management of Health Services from the National School of Public Health, Greece in 2020. To date he has published 7 papers in conference proceedings, 1 paper in journals and 1 chapter in books with reviews. He lives in Athens, Greece.
Alexandra Castro is an integrated researcher of Dinamia’Cet, a Research Unit of the University Instituto of Lisbon. In the last 25 years she conducted several researchs projects in the fields of Evaluation of social policies; Roma housing; Mediation; Inter-ethnic relations; Migrants; and Poverty and social exclusion. She worked more than 10 years in the Portuguese Social Security Institute assessing social policies.
Since 2013, she has been a member of the Advisory Group for the Integration of Roma Communities and in 2021 has participated as a member of the working group for the Portuguese National Plan to Combat Racism and Discrimination (2021 -2025). She is also Advisor to the Board of Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa since 2016, collaborating in the design of social services and monitoring the execution of projects and programmes.
Since May 2021, Dorothy Adams has been working with the OECD to pursue projects focused on better use of data and evidence to improve policy and programme design.
Dorothy served as CEO at the New Zealand Social Wellbeing Agency between 2020 and 2021, and before that, as the Acting CEO at the Social Investment Agency, which she led from its inception in July 2015. Before that, she was a General Manager in the Ministry of Social Development, where she was responsible for their data, analytics and evidence hub.
Between 1998-2008, Ms. Adams worked in local government specialising in policy and governance. Ms. Adams has a Master of Public Administration from Monash University and an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington. She is an Enrolled Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of Wellington.
Tadas LeonÄikas is a senior research manager in the Social Policies unit at Eurofound. His main responsibilities relate to management of the European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) and development of Eurofound survey research. Since joining Eurofound in 2010, he has worked on various topics including survey methods, quality of life, trust, social mobility, social inclusion and measuring quality of public services. Previously, he headed up the Institute for Ethnic Studies in Lithuania and worked on minority surveys. As a researcher, he has previously collaborated with the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, the United Nations Development Programme and the International Organization for Migration. His educational background is in sociology (PhD).