Meet our team
Our day to day operations are taken care of by our staff team, both remotely and in our office in Arterra Bizimodu ecovillage, Navarra (Spain). Our Council, selected from and by our members at our General Assembly, takes care of our strategic vision.
You can contact our team using the contact form.
The GEN Europe staff team
Angel Matilla
IT Manager
Since 2017, Angel (he/him/his) has been living in the community of Arterra Bizimodu and working in the GEN Office Team as IT Manager to help strengthen GEN Europe’s IT sovereignty by means of promoting self-hosted free open source software (FOSS) throughout the network to cover ourIT needs. He has a telecommunications engineering background and 10 years of experience in developing and integrating software and managing technical teams. In 2011 he started developing an interest in the limits of growth, the fossil fuels’ peak and the non-sustainable practices of the current society. Since then he has been researching other ways of solving the polycrisis by living life, in more regenerative, self-sufficient, resilient and communal ways.
Annika Alex
Finance Manager
Annika (she/her/hers) joined the ecovillage movement in 2017 by volunteering at the German ecovillage Sieben Linden and later becoming a member. She fell in love with the holistic approach as well as the community itself. in 2019 she got in touch with the GEN Gathering and European projects.
She has been part of the strategic partnership of Yes to Sustainability, written a few applications for ERASMUS projects and is managing the ESC for German communities through GEN Germany. Since 2022 she’s a board member of GEN Germany and taking care of the finances together with the accountant.
In addition to the affinity for numbers and spreadsheets along with project management and facilitation skills she loves to play the piano, sing, dance and do a lot of handcrafts – knitting patterns to connect as many hearts as possible.
Franziska Reißig
Membership Manager
Ziska (she/her/hers) has lived in different ecovillages and communities around Europe since 2021. Including Arterra Bizimodu where she worked as a GEN volunteer in Project coordination. Since then she has been dedicated to coordinating Erasmus+ projects for a variety of European NGOs, in order to create profound and connecting community learning experiences. Her background lies in Nature Conservation and Ecology studies. As she cares profoundly about system change, she believes in the power of communities as part of the solutions. Ziska is also part of our partner Yes To Sustainability, an iniative creating experiences in ecovillages for youth.
In 2023 she co-organised the European Ecovillage Gathering by coordinating the Volunteer GEN Dream Team.
In her work in GEN Europe as membership manager she offers administrative skills, networking ability and creativity, which allows her to keep weaving the network, connecting dots, and creating opportunities that bring about social change.
Besides all of that she loves bathing in rivers, reading (especially Harry Potter) and having a good boogie. Ziska is based in Pamplona, Northern Spain, surrounded by dear friends.
Aurelie Neumann
Events Manager
Aurelie (she/her/hers) has previously worked for various NGOs that all had a strong focus on community-led initiatives.
She has been following GEN Europe’s activities since 2018 and attended the Gathering in 2022 & 2023. She enjoyed this event so much that she decided to take on the co-coordinator position in 2024.
She is currently based in a vibrant ecovillage in Belgium, L’Arbre qui Pousse.
Her heart is moved by earth-based spirituality, and she sees the living world as sacred, and hopes we can finally one day enter in a relation of reciprocity & mutual care with the earth and all the beautiful life forms inhabiting it. She highly values authentic connections & spaces that enable humans to do so. She also loves to dance and you will probably see her doing so every night at the Gathering.
Nataša Gvozdić
Events Manager
Nataša (she/her/hers) is a passionate and experienced event coordinator with a heart for caring about people, the planet and sustainable living. With ten years in event coordination, project management, and community building.
Active in local eco-friendly projects and GEN trainings such as CLIPS community building training, she knew that one of her purposes mission in this life is to create a greener, healthier and happier world. She’s excited to bring her positive authentic self with her organizational skills, creative touch and warm heart to GEN Europe, ready to make every next gathering a memorable and impactful experience for all.
She is based in a small village in Serbia called Slavkovica, where her dream is to develop an eco-conscious community, to spread the GEN network in the Balkans, to educate and involve locals and children in a sustainable lifestyle.
Dario Ferraro
Project Development Manager
Dario (he/him/his) is a project manager, a facilitator and a filmmaker that started his ecovillage journey in 2017 at Sunseed Desert Technology where he was Communications Coordinator and where he started organising youth exchanges and trainings funded by Erasmus+. He was a member of the core group that was steering the network Yes to Sustainability between 2018 and 2023 and he became part of GEN Europe’s staff at the end of 2022.
As a project manager, he works on developing partnerships and projects for GEN Europe and other ecovillages and sustainable initiatives. As a facilitator, he works with several ecovillages in Europe in the development of transformational learning programmes related to project development, group facilitation, participatory documentary and deep ecology. As a filmmaker, he likes to get involved in projects with a slow narrative and a strong personal approach.
He feels European and has lived in Italy, Scotland, Germany, Spain and Lithuania, but now is trying to adopt a more regular seasonal migration pattern, spending the warm months in Vilnius and the cold ones in the ecovillage Torri Superiore.
Fanny van Hal
Project Manager
Fanny (she/her/hers) grew up in an intentional community of 18 households located in the fruit basket region of the Netherlands. She moved to the Arterra Bizimodu community in Spain in 2015.
Always having had an interest in ecovillages, Fanny travelled and visited several eco projects around the world, ranging from occupied villages to self-sufficient farms and ecovillages and did her final thesis project with the Council of Sustainable Settlements of Latin America (CASA) and their national network CASA Colombia.. Through these experiences and growing up in one such community she has come to value living in a communal setting for the ways that diverse individuals promote sharing, working together, organisation, planning, and conflict resolution.
Manja Vrenko
General Coordinator
Manja (she/her/hers) is a co-founding member of the Sunny Hill community in Slovenia, where she lives and works. She has been involved in different working groups in GEN Europe since 2014, and she serves in a role of the membership officer since May 2021 . She contributed to development of the Community Incubator (CLIPS) program, and she is an experienced facilitator. At Sunny Hill she is in charge for organization of events and workshops promoting sustainable lifestyle and ecovillage culture. She is a permaculture practitioner, and when she is not involved with one of her various projects, she cultivates land, cares for goats, bakes bread and makes cheese.
Maja Flajsig
Communications Manager
Maja (she/her/hers) has been seeking for more profound connections with human and more-than-human world since her childhood. Being interested in the communities these relations create, she finished her masters degree in Anthropology in Croatia, where she comes from.
Her passion for co-creation led her to collaborate with various environmental and climate organisations in need for creative campaigns and communication strategies. These alliances inspired her to travel across many different (eco)villages and projects, finally bringing her to a growing rural community on the island of Crete where she lives.
This journey provided Maja with networking and management skills while nurturing her creative spark and love for the world. She brings all of the gifts life has offered her to the role of Communications Manager in GEN Europe, maintaining her constant pursuit of the social and ecological regeneration.
The GEN Europe Council
Guillaume Couarraze
Pourgues
Guillaume is living in the ecovillage of Pourgues close to the French Pyrenees and represents the French network, Cooperative Oasis.
He works as a coordinator for an association organizing summer camps and school trips in France and Europe for children and teenagers.
He is skilled in conflict management, facilitating, event organisation and networking.
Abdul Otman
Little Wild
Abdul was born in Libya, raised in France, initially joined Suderbyn Ecovillage as a European Solidarity Volunteer, lived in Findhorn (Scotland), and is now establishing the Little Wild ecovillage in the French Pyrenees.
He holds an engineering degree in Digital Technologies from Telecom SudParis and a Master of Science in Information and Communication Technologies from the Asian Institute of Technology. He brings his strong IT background as well as Project and Operations Manager with significant experience in building teams and inspiring them to be agents of change.
He brings a direct link of GEN Europe with ECOLISE as well as with Chemins de la Transition and is inspired to connect French movements with Europe, and vice versa.
Teodora Radulescu
Schloss Glarisegg
Teodora is a trauma-informed coach and facilitator, offering transformative spaces where groups and communities experience deep connection to themselves, higher purpose and nature.
Teodora has lived in communities since she was 23 starting with a fairly remote permaculture oriented community in Romania. After four years of nomadic travel in over 30 eco-community projects, she decided to stabilise in Schloss Glarisegg, Switzerland, from which she creates, organises and facilitates workshops on community building, Earth Re-Connection and personal resilience for adults and youth, trough dialogue and collective trauma healing methodology.
Jake Jay-Lewin
Findhorn
Jake grew up in the Findhorn Community and has stayed active in the Ecovillage world since. He co-founded NextGEN International and spent seven years in various leadership positions across it and NextGEN Europe, the youth arm of the Global Ecovillage Network; supporting and designing their emergence.
He draws on his experiences from visiting close to 50 communities worldwide in his work as a professional facilitator, coach, trainer, and project manager.
Monique Wijn
GEN NL
Monique Wijn is an educator and trainer in permaculture and ecovillage tools and methods. She is co-founder and board member of the Dutch Ecovillage Network, GEN Netherlands, where she organises the summer and winter national meeting, the yearly festival and and the 3-4 yearly newsletter. She is international representative of GEN-NL in Europe and Dutch representative and co-coördinator of the CLIPS project, the Erasmus+ partnership in developing trainings for starting communities.
Johannes Kübel
GEN Suisse
Johannes is a co-founding member of the Jupiterhaus.ch community in Zürich, Switzerland. At Jupiterhaus, he is responsible for IT, accounting, and food supply. As the initiator of Lightwave.ch and Koopernikus.ch, Johannes has extensive experience in purpose-driven entrepreneurship, particularly in creating sustainable food systems. His involvement with Jupiterhaus led him to engage with GEN Suisse’s Next Gen initiative, and he also represents GEN Suisse at GEN Europe meetings. As a council member, Johannes aims to raise awareness about the GEN Bank and explore new opportunities to generate income streams for GEN staff.
