We are happy to announce that, two years after the kick-off workshop in Budapest 2023, the first 20 participants have graduated from the EAN Leadership Programme. EAN President Prof. Elena Moro congratulated the EAN’s first Certified Leaders of European Neurology, who received their certificates during the President’s Dinner at the EAN Congress 2025 in Helsinki:
Graduates in alphabetical order:
Patrick Altmann, Austria
Roberta Balestrino, Italy
Elena Bondareva, Austria
Tatiana Bremova-Ertl, Switzerland
Vanessa Carvalho, Portugal
Bogdan Ciopleias, Romania
Peter Dedeken, Belgium
Yildiz Degirmenci, Türkiye
Ana Catarina Gaspar Fonseca, Portugal
Beata Labuz-Roszak, Poland
Taras Moroz, Ukraine
Zuzana Nedelska, Czech Republic
Adrian Pace, Malta
Katarzyna Smilowska, Poland
Ioannis Stavropoulos, UK
Benedetta Storti, Italy
Nina Vashchenko, Russian Federation
Malcolm Vella, Malta
Barbara Willekens, Belgium
Raphael Wurm, Austria
The participants completed three onsite workshops and ten online modules led by leadership expert trainers, keynote lectures from leaders in Neurology and guest speakers from the EAN Board, as well as self-organised peer-group work and individual learning activities. Over the course of the past two years, their curriculum covered important leadership skills, such as conflict management, project management, team management and motivation, giving feedback, advocacy and leadership, and a lot more.
Besides their last workshop and the graduation ceremony, they also presented the results of their peer group projects during the EAN congress in Helsinki, which they have developed over the past year as part of the course.
Listen to the presentation on the Virtual Congress Platform:
EAN Leadership Programme 2023-2025: final peer group presentations
We congratulate the graduating group on this great success and wish them all the very best!
At the same time, one day before the EAN Congress 2025, a new group of participants started the second cohort of the EAN Leadership Programme with their first onsite workshop. Among all eligible applicants, the EAN Leadership Task Force chose 20 participants from 14 different countries (in alphabetical order):
Marko Celicanin, Denmark
David Crosiers, Belgium
Amar Elsaddig, UK
Sanja Gluscevic, Montenegro
Oxana Grosu, Moldova
Sonja Hochmeister, Austria
Franziska Maria Ippen, Germany
Andreas Koupparis, Greece
Krista Kuitwaard, The Netherlands
Theodoros Mavridis, Ireland
Sara Meoni, France
Fabio Paio, Italy
Marina Picillo, Italy
Simone Salemme, Italy
Sara Samadzadeh, Germany
Stephan Seiler, Austria
Jan Stork, Austria
Irina Maria Vlad, Romania
Sandra Vujovic, Montenegro
Nune Yeghiazaryan, Armenia
The participants were officially welcomed by EAN President Prof. Elena Moro and Executive Director Anja Sander.
The purpose of this workshop was to introduce the participants to the programme by presenting the content and learning methods for the upcoming two years and explaining the requirements for the certificate. Participants and trainers got to know each other with different interactive exercises, talked about expectations and defined their individual learning goals for the programme.
After the kick-off, the participants will start working with their peer-groups and have five online modules with leadership trainers and leaders in neurology, before they meet again in person at EAN 2026 in Geneva. The participants will finish the programme at EAN 2027 in Gothenburg.
We thank all participants who took part in the workshop, and we are looking forward to the next steps and lots of interesting online modules coming up next.
You can find all necessary information about the Leadership Programme at https://www.ean.org/learn/career-development/leadership-programme
