IDEA Staff

Alex works mostly on the Debatabase. He is in charge of moderating the public elements and increasing the quality of debates on the site. Alex joined IDEA in January 2011, having previously worked for Debatewise for two years. He has an identical twin brother who sometimes appears in the office to confuse us. Alex holds a Master’s degree in Diplomacy from Nottingham University, UK.

Kanstantsin has 10-year journalistic experience as a reporter, observer and news editor with the top independent media in his native Belarus.

Writing about politics, international relations, civil society, national-building processes, he was honoured with a number of awards for high-quality journalism, promotion of democratisation and Europeanisation of ‘the last European dictatorship’ from OSCE and EU delegations in his country.

Chevening Scholarship holder, he earned MA degree in International Politics from City University London and joined IDEA London in June 2012 to launch new IDEA’s website in Russian — ru.idebate.org.

Giovanna is responsible for outreach in Western Europe, and supporting the implementation of IDEA-UK's national and international programmes. In 2012 most of her work will focus on the UK, Italy and France, building capacity and relationships across our network, with a particular interest in organisations working with young people and criminal justice. Giovanna holds a Masters degree in Human Rights from University College London and has worked as a teacher, project coordinator and manager before joining IDEA UK in 2012. She spent much of her upbringing in the DRC, Ghana, Sri Lanka and Austria, speaks 4 languages, and enjoys a mean game of poker.

Alexander Cavell holds a BSc in Sociology from the London School of Economics and is currently studying for an MA in History and Politics at Birkbeck College. Alex is an enthusiastic member of the UK debating circuit, spending his spare time speaking, judging and training novice debaters for the University of London Union’s debating society.

As a competitive debater, Alex won and topped the speaker tab at the 2013 Sciences Po Open, spoke in the final of the KCL IV in both 2011 and 2012, was a finalist at the 2012 Bristol IV, a semi-finalist at the 2012 UK Debate Challenge, the 2013 Manchester IV and the 2011 Utrecht Open (among many others).

Alex designs and delivers training programs for IDEA’s Youth and Media and Debate in the Neighbourhood projects. He also coordinates IDEA's public debating events within the UK.

Alex’s academic interests include the history and politics of Central Asia, the history of Russia, the history of England in the seventeenth century and social theory.

Chirada manages regional debate programs and creates debate networks in Southeast Asia. She completed two Master's degrees, one in Public Administration at the University of York and one Public Policy at the Central European University. Prior to joining IDEA, she conducted policy research at the Bank of Thailand and the Hungarian National Development Agency.

Jackson Tucker has worked in publishing for five years, first as managing editor of the literary journal Arts and Letters while earning an MFA in fiction at Georgia College, then as an editorial assistant at Neal-Schuman Publishers in New York. After working at Macmillan Higher Education editing mathematics and statistics textbooks, Jackson began working with idebate Press, where he publishes the biannual iDebate magazine, the academic journal Controversia, and the press's front list, which includes books on debating and its various formats, contemporary controversies and topics related to young people.

Aditi coordinates Debate in the Neighborhood, a program aimed at bringing together immigrant and first-generation students in New York to participate in debate. The program aspires to foster understanding, cooperation, and a free exchange of ideas among students from a diversity of cultures, ethnicities, and religious traditions. Before joining IDEA, Aditi worked in study abroad and international education and is completing her Master's degree in International Education from New York University. 

Mite has had a long history of working as an Online Media Consultant and a Social Media Strategist for the OSF Youth Initiative. Over the past five years, Mite has worked extensively within the IDEA and OSF networks to make world of debate close to the people outside of debate circuit and debate communities through innovative use of online tools and media.

A noted social media expert, Mite is currently serving as the Media & Online Community Manager.

As a soon to be master of software engineering, he has been working on many different positions and projects in web and application development, computer administration, ITSM, lifelong learning and e-learning implementation.  Over the past years he has been working in various local IT companies and organizations, as well as with worldwide known web portals like worldcrunch.com.

Goran has a long history of working as a Journalist, Editor and Project Manager. For a period of five years he has been working as a journalist for several national print and electronic media in Macedonia. After leaving journalism, he continued to write for several online local and regional media and worked for five years as a Project Manager within the NGO Habitat for Humanity Macedonia. He has more than four years of experience working with youth within the Youth in Action Programme and he is a member and founder of several youth and youth umbrella organizations in the country and abroad.

In 2012, he was a Digital Storytelling trainer at “Youth in 21st Century: Debating and Producing Media, Aghveran, Armenia” Camp, organized by OSI Armenia.

Rhiannon joined IDEA Central in December 2012 and is responsible for coordinating and implementing external communications for the IDEA network.  Originally from Hong Kong, she has a Masters in International Public Relations and over 10 years experience in developing marketing and communications strategies and activities in the not-for-profit sector, both in the UK and Nepal.

Marketing management, branding and promotion of IDEA events and training programs, update and supervise the Spanish IDEA website and Facebook account, develop strategic alliances in order to develop new debate programs. Lilian holds a major in Tourism Management at the Universidad del Valle de México, a Hospitality and Human Resources Management at the Glion Institute of Higher Education at Switzerland.  She has over six years of work experience.

She supports with the office needs for information and the administrative work, such as grant proposals and research on sources of funding, data base research, logistics event support like visas arrangements, suppliers attention. Geovanna is currently a student of International Relations at the Universidad Iberoamericana.