Assya Kavrakova

As Executive Director of ECAS, Assya’s main tasks are to:

• Provide direction to the formulation and leadership to the achievement of the organisation’s vision, mission, strategy and objectives;
• Manage ECAS’ day to day activities.

Assya Kavrakova has 20 years of experience in senior management positions in the non-governmental sector, including skills to manage diverse portfolios of projects and activities. She has excellent leading abilities in managing full-time employees, as well as a wide variety of expert networks that are mission and product delivery oriented. She possesses in-depth knowledge of EU Funding Rules and Procedures, EU structural and Cohesion Policy, Schengen regulatory framework, EU external policy decision-making, EU enlargement policy and leverage, European citizenship and Rights framework and EU civic participation formal and informal mechanisms.

Assya has a Master’s degree in Law and another Master’s degree in European Studies. She has served as the Director of European Policies and the Civic Participation Program at the Open Society Institute (OSI-S) in Sofia, Bulgaria, from 2000 to 2012 and as a Public Policies and Outreach Director at the Democracy Network Program (DemNet) of the USAID before that. She was also the Executive Director of the Bulgarian branch of Transparency International. Assya Kavrakova is a German Marshall Memorial Fellow.