WHO WE ARE
Co-Founder
Zsófia is a socially conscious entrepreneur, who started her career as an international news producer, covering business and economy stories across Europe with a focus on the new EU countries. She is an activist in the UK and Hungary.
Zsófia Banuta
Co-Founder
Elliott is a British-based journalist and winner of the Wyn Harness Journalist Award, with over a decade’s experience covering elections, human rights, politics and creative activism. He is a contributor to the International State Crime Initiative and recent Winston Churchill Memorial Fellow focusing on the Future of Work and nexus of democracy and business. He previously co-led Undivided, a movement countering polarization in the wake of the UK Brexit referendum, and was an advisory board member of We Make Change, a social action social network.
Elliott Goat
dr. Garvan Walshe
Co-Founder
Garvan is an Irish political strategist. A former foreign policy adviser to the British Conservative Party, after the Brexit referendum defeat, he turned his attention to protecting liberal democracy from authoritarian demagogues. He is a research associate at the Wilfred Martens Centre for European Studies and works with the ARENA programme at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He writes regularly for Foreign Policy and has been published in outlets including Die Welt, Ha’aretz, The Guardian, The Economist, Rzeczpospolita and CNN. He holds a PhD from the University of Manchester and was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute.
dr. Melani Barlai
Co-Founder
Melani is co-founder and coordinator of the Hungarian online voting advice application “Vokskabin ” whose primary goal is to advise citizens on issues which are socially most relevant and to help point out the differences between the positions of the political parties and our own opinions. She currently works for netPOL (Network Political Communication), an international academic political communications network at Andrássy University. She holds a PhD from the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.
Creative Designer
Emese is a service designer and design strategist with a focus on civic tech and democratic innovation. She has been awarded by GSA Innovation School: Creative Bravery Prize for her concept addressing the political polarization. Her speculative design work, in which she investigated the notion of caring citizenship, was featured in the London Design Biennale 2023 Care Manifesto. Emese is an activist in civic tech initiatives like Code for Hungary (K-monitor) and a design researcher of the e-lectorate project. She also contributes to an indie game development Supermajority, which raises awareness of political decision-making complexities.
