Natalie Bennet
Natalie Bennett is a former leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, having served two terms from 2012 to 2016. She also has experience as a trustee of the Fawcett Society, Britain’s most prominent feminist organisation, for four years until 2014. In her previous professional life she was a journalist, working for several publications including The Times, the Independent and finishing with five years as editor of the Guardian Weekly, the international edition of the Guardian. She was a member of the Editorial Board of the Green European Journal from 2012 to 2014.
Reinhard Bütikofer
Joachim Denkinger (Treasurer)
Joachim Denkinger studied Social Sciences and economics at Göttingen university in Germany where he also got his PhD shortly before moving to Brussels in 1995 to work with the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament as its economic adviser. He became the Deputy Secretary General of the group in 2005 and ended his job in early 2017 when he retired and moved to Berlin with his family. In his “former” live he was a Green grassroot activist, a local counsellor, a lay judge, a tourist guide and for ten years a researcher at a research institute in Germany. Jochen, as all his friends call him, has been elected member of the Board of the GEF and became its Treasurer in November 2016.
Dirk Holemans
Olga Kikou (Secretary)
Olga Kikou is the president of the Green Greek Institute in Greece. She studied sociology and pursued postgraduate and doctoral studies at the University of Massachusetts in the USA. She managed the Volunteer Programme of the Athens 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games and held roles in research, planning and project implementation in Greece. Currently she is based in Brussels as the European Affairs Manager for the international NGO ‘Compassion in World Farming’, where she advocates for farm animal welfare and sustainable food and farming.
Susanne Rieger (Co-President)
Susanne Rieger has been responsible for European issues and European relations in the Catalan Green foundation Fundació Nous Horitzons (FNH) for the past eight years. Since 2009, she is also member of the Board of FNH. She has been delegate to the GEF General Assembly since the founding of GEF. From a professional point of view, Susanne has been dealing with issues of political education, capacity building, political and public discussions and communication structures on the European level for the past twenty years. She is based in Barcelona and working as coach and consultant in different European countries.
Lucile Schmid (Co-President)
Lucile Schmid is the president of the Fondation de l’Ecologie Politique in France. She has been a member of GEF’s General Assembly since 2014. She is a senior official in the Ministry of Economy and Finances in France where she works on trainings for civil servants in ecological issues. For several years, she has been a member of the editorial board of the French journal Esprit. Between 2010 and 2016, she served as a member of the Executive Board of Europe Ecologie – Les Verts. Currently, she is the vice-president of a French think tank La fabrique écologique .