Maria Efthymiou is an Economist, with a MBA. She is an experienced researcher, with over 10 years of relevant professional experience (qualitative and quantitative research), as part of various EU-funded and national projects. These projects and programmes cover a wide range of thematic areas, like responding to the needs of socially vulnerable groups (e.g. migrants / refugees, marginalised youth, LGBT populations, single-parented families, unaccompanied minors, etc.) in terms of facilitating their social inclusion and integration into the labour market, promoting social entrepreneurship, building skills and competences and supporting human rights.