Team

Yulia Shapovalova is a Principal Counsel at the Legal Transition Programme (LTP) of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and works in areas of dispute resolution and public procurement reform. Yulia joined the EBRD in November 2017. Yulia has over 18 years of professional legal experience, having started her career at the Ministry of Justice of the Kyrgyz Republic in 2000. Since 2007, she has worked with various international donor organisations, such as USAID, IFC World Bank Group, ADB and OSCE on providing legal and policy advice to government officials in the implementation of legal reform aimed at improving the investment climate in developing countries. With academic qualification and professional experience in both civil and common law jurisdiction, Yulia was awarded a master’s degree in International Business Law at Queen Mary University of London (UK) in 2015, specialising in international investment and trade law and international commercial arbitration. Yulia is qualified as a Solicitor of England and Wales.

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Patricia Zghibarta is a legal consultant at the Legal Transition Programme (LTP) of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), where she focuses on reforms in the area of dispute resolution in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Prior to joining the EBRD, Patricia was a senior staff attorney in the USAID-funded Open Justice Project, where she advised on the development of an integrated case management system for the courts in Moldova. Patricia also has extensive experience in providing legal and policy advice to government officials in the implementation of legal reforms aimed at improving the business regulatory and investment climate. Patricia trained in both Moldova and the United Kingdom, where she pursued an LL.M. at the University of Cambridge as a Chevening and Cambridge Trust Scholar. Following graduation, she was awarded a Pegasus Scholarship and is currently a Weinstein JAMS Fellow. Patricia is qualified as a Solicitor in England and Wales.

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Illia serves as an Associate Counsel in the Office of the General Counsel at the EBRD. Before this role, he consulted the EBRD as a Dispute Resolution Reform Regional Advisor, implementing various justice sector reforms across Europe and Asia.  

Previously, Illia served as Director-General for the Rule of Law Directorate at the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine and advised the President of Ukraine through the national commission on legal reform. Before that, Illia worked as a Senior Assistant to the President of the Supreme Court of Ukraine and acted as the Supreme Court’s focal point for the European Court of Human Rights under Protocol 16 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Illia has also advised several international organisations, including the Council of Europe and the European Union, and completed a Visiting Professional with the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court. 

Illia holds master’s degrees in International Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford and in International Dispute Resolution from Queen Mary University of London, and is a Fellow of the European Law Institute.

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Svetozara Petkova has over 20 years of experience as a rule of law advisor and researcher with a solid history of working in the development sector. She has Masters Degrees in Law from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” and from Warwick University in the United Kingdom. Her areas of expertise include comparative legal research, judicial reform, civil procedure, legislative drafting, legal analysis, project design and project management. She has provided services to the World Bank, USAID, UNDP, Ernst Young Bulgaria, Dentons Poland, America for Bulgaria Foundation and others in Bulgaria, Greece, the Western Balkans, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Croatia, Russia, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions.

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Dr. Vihar Georgiev is a governance and evaluation consultant with over 16 years of experience. He is currently Assistant Professor at the European Studies Department of Sofia University. His expertise encompasses a broad spectrum of areas including strategy development, digital transformation, comprehensive stakeholder engagement, evaluation and impact assessment, and policymaking. His multifaceted consultancy experience is bolstered by his work with Dentons, EY, KPMG, and the World Bank. He has contributed to programmes and projects financed by the European Union, the European Economic Area, the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and other international donors.

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Dr. Alejandro Ponce is the Chief Research Officer of the World Justice Project. He joined the WJP as Senior Economist and is one of the original designers and a lead author of the WJP Rule of Law Index. Dr. Ponce leads the research and data collection initiatives of the World Justice Project, including the administration of the WJP Rule of Law Index, the development of research initiatives on access to justice and the rule of law, and the design and implementation of nationwide surveys in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the EU, and Mexico. Prior to joining the World Justice Project, Dr. Ponce worked as a researcher at Yale University and as an economist at the World Bank and the Mexican Banking and Securities Commission. Dr. Ponce has conducted research in the areas of behavioral economics, financial inclusion, justice indicators, access to justice, and the rule of law, and has been published in collected volumes as well as top academic journals such as the American Economic Review and the Journal of Law and Economics. He is a frequent speaker in international conferences and policy forums in the area of rule of law. He holds a B.A. in Economics from ITAM in Mexico, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.

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He was born on January 6, 1977, in Trzebiatów. He graduated from the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Warsaw in 2000 and obtained an LLM in Comparative Constitutional Law from the Central European University in Budapest in 2001. In 2006, he earned a Ph.D. in legal sciences, followed by habilitation in 2019. Bodnar taught at the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Warsaw from 2006 to 2020 and served as a professor at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Computer Science from 2019 to 2020. Since 2021, he has been the dean of the Faculty of Law at the SWPS University. Additionally, he is a visiting professor at the University of Cologne and a senior fellow at the Democracy Institute of Central European University in Budapest. His professional background includes working at the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges from 1999 to 2004. Bodnar has been involved in various organizations, such as the European Institute for Gender Equality, the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture, and theEU Agency for Fundamental Rights. From 2015 to 2021, he served as the Commissioner for Human Rights in Poland. Adam Bodnar is also a member of program and advisory boards of national and international organizations, including the Congress of Civic Democratic Movements Foundation and the World Organization Against Torture. He founded the Congress of Civil Rights Foundation and has authored numerous scholarly publications in the field of law. As a recognition for his contributions to upholding the rule of law and human rights, he has received national and international awards, including the Rafto Prize and the Order of the Griffin of West Pomerania. In addition, he is a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He was elected as a senator for the 9th term in 2023, representing district 44 (Warsaw's Białołęka, Bielany, Śródmieście, Żoliborz districts, as well as the votes of Polish citizens abroad). Currently he holds the position of the Minister of Justice in Poland.

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Georg Stawa, former Judge, Head of Department and Secretary General in the Ministry of Justice, now Judicial Attaché for the Western Balkans at the Austrian Embassy in Belgrade. He participates in international research projects, is Guest Lecturer at the Panteion University Athens, member of “UAjucticeinwar” Expert Group of the Institute of International Relations of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and has a long experience in justice reform projects in countries of Central and (South) Eastern Europe in leading positions. Georg Stawa is long-term member of the Commission for Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) of the Council of Europe, for which he served as President.

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First vice-president of the International Union of judicial officers (UIHJ), with 99 member countries and over 100 organizations, one of the major international organizations of legal professionals. During the past 25 years Jos has been mainly active as a legal reform and legal drafting expert in numerous countries both within and outside Europe, mainly in the field of enforcement law (for European Commission, IMF, World Bank, EBRD, USAID). Currently active in: Western Balkan region, Azerbaijan, Mongolia, Laos, EU member states (on privacy). He has been active as a lecturer at the Dutch University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht, the Netherlands, Prishtina State University and as a guest lecturer at different universities and judicial academies. He is a reporter of the Project Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets of the European Law Institute; was a project member of the Blockchain and smart contracts project team (also European Law Institute). He is an observer member of the Unidroit project on principles for effective enforcement and observer member of the Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) of the Council of Europe working group on Cyberjustice and AI.

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Oleksandra (Sasha) Popova serves as a Private Sector Analyst within the Business Ready (B-READY) project under the Development Economics Vice-Presidency of the World Bank. In her current role, she oversees the Taxation Topic. With over 5 years of experience in research in the field of private sector development, her primary focus is on dispute resolution and taxation. Sasha has also played an integral part to acquire a new global dataset on business reform committees. Before joining the World Bank Group, Sasha contributed her expertise to a law firm in Ukraine, specializing in commercial law. She holds a Master of Laws degree in Taxation from the University of Washington and a Master of Laws degree from Kyiv State University.

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Raman Maroz leads the Dispute Resolution topic of the Business Ready project (World Bank Group), working on the design and implementation of indicators related to court litigation and alternative dispute resolution. He previously was in charge of the Enforcing Contracts indicator and contributed to the Resolving Insolvency topic in Doing Business. Raman’s research interests lie in the areas of comparative law, law and development, and law and economics. Prior to joining the World Bank Group, he worked for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and clerked at the Constitutional Court of Belarus. Raman holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from the University of Notre Dame Law School where he was a Fulbright scholar, a Law degree from the Belarusian State University, and a University degree in Political Science and European Studies from the Université Montesquieu - Bordeaux IV.

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Dr.sc.Tatjana Zoroska Kamilovska is a Full Professor of Civil Procedural Law at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Faculty of Law “Iustinianus Primus” where she teaches Civil Procedural, Arbitration, Alternative Dispute Resolution and Cross-border Civil Proceedings in EU. She is a Head of the Civil Procedure Department, a Head of the postgraduate and doctoral studies in Civil law (both substantive and procedural) at the same faculty. She is also a Member of the University Senate (2023/2026). Professor Zoroska Kamilovska has been a visiting researcher and a visiting professor at several universities in Europe, including the Max Planck Institute in Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law, University of Pavia, Italy and Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Professor Zoroska Kamilovska is an author/coauthor of seven books, four monographs and more than 80 scientific papers. She has been a leader or participant in many scientific projects, and a speaker in numerous international and domestic conferences, seminars and workshops.

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