Meet our jury
An independent Jury of experts will discuss the shortlist and select one single award winner. Our Jury members come from the fields of social development, social entrepreneurship, academia or civil society. The composition of the Jury takes into consideration the geographical diversity of CEB membership as well as gender balance.
Gianluca Esposito is serving as Director General of Human Rights and Rule of Law of the Council of Europe since 1 August 2024.
He was previously the Director of the Private Office of the Secretary General and the Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe. Prior to this, he served as Executive Secretary of the Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), Head of the Crime Problems Department, and Head of the Equality and Human Dignity Department.
Gianluca started his career at the Council of Europe in 1995 where he was involved in the negotiation of several conventions and other legal instruments, in the areas of nationality, anti-corruption, cybercrime, the efficiency of justice, combating trafficking in human beings, money laundering, terrorism and its financing. From 2005 to 2009, he was an adviser in the Private Office of the Council of Europe’s Secretary General and Deputy Secretary General. Gianluca served as the Council of Europe’s first Ethics Officer.
From 2009 to 2015, Gianluca was as a Senior Counsel in the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, DC.
Annemiek Dresen is the founder and director of NewBees. She is driven by a strong belief that if we harness all talent, everybody benefits. Annemiek holds degrees in Art History and Social Anthropology, and has extensive experience as a social entrepreneur, both in the Netherlands and abroad. Before starting NewBees she worked in finance, mainly focusing on sustainable and impact investment opportunities in the European market. She lived in Central and North America, as well as in several European countries. With NewBees, founded in 2026, she aims to use her experience and education to bridge the gap between people and systems, so everybody can thrive and contribute.
NewBees offers newcomers practical guidance towards work, and advises employers to implement a more inclusive workplace with employer label NewBees INC. Over 6000 newcomers have found their way in the Netherlands with NewBees, and over 100 European companies work on inclusion with NewBees INC.
In 2022 Annemiek was included as one of MT/Sprout's 30 most inclusive leaders in the Netherlands.
Jimmy Moloney is elected Councillor of Kerry County Council, Ireland and former Mayor of County Kerry.
He is the Head of Irish Delegation to Congress of Regional and Local Authorities of the Council of Europe and Vice President of the Social Inclusion Committee. He is also deputy thematic spokesperson on ethics and prevention of corruption.
Currently Jimmy serves as Rapporteur on Addressing the housing crisis in European cities through social housing innovations. In 2022 he was co-rapporteur on report on the “Future of Youth in Rural Areas” which was presented to Congress at the March 2022 sitting.
Dr. Yekaterina (Kat) Chzhen is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Fellow of Trinity College Dublin with an international reputation for interdisciplinary research on child poverty and well-being.
She mainly works on poverty and inequality across the life course, focusing on material well-being, education, health and life satisfaction. She specialises in quantitative methods, mixed methods, longitudinal research and cross-country comparative research.
Kat came to Trinity from the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence in September 2019. She was leading a comparative study on inequalities in childhood in higher income countries (producing one of UNICEF's flagship publications, the Innocenti Report Card). Prior to Innocenti, Kat spent two years as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Quantitative Methods in Social and Political Sciences at the University of Oxford and a Non-Stipendiary Research Fellow at Nuffield College.
Mr Boček, a Czech national, served as Special Representative of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe on Migration and Refugees. His mandate included gathering information on the steps that Council of Europe member states were taking in order to protect the fundamental rights of migrants and refugees, and proposing appropriate action at national and European level.
From 2010 until the end of January 2016 he was Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Czech Republic to the Council of Europe, in which capacity he also represented the Czech Republic to the CEB Governing Board. During the period 2013-2015, he was Vice-President of the Governing Board of the CEB. He has previously served as Deputy Minister for International Relations and EU Affairs at the Ministry of Justice of the Czech Republic and has held senior posts in the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs.