Oleksii Kolesnykov - political expert, policy analyst, social activist.

Fields of expertize: local governance and decentralization, regional and local politics and policies, democracy, good governance, civic engagement, social self-organization and civil society

Oleksii has more than 15 years of experience in research and policy analysis, including 10 years in an academic environment. He worked as a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the Yuriy Fedkovich Chernivtsi National University (2006-2017), as well as a research fellow at the Research Institute of European Integration and Regional Studies of the same university (2011-2017).

For more than 20 years, he has been involved in the activities of various non-governmental organizations; since late 2018, he leads the All-Ukrainian NGO "Association for Community Self-Organization Assistance". It is a think tank aimed to promote democracy, good governance and capable local communities, as well as social self-organization and civil society development in Ukraine. Prior to that, he worked in this organization as a policy analyst for two more years. Totally, as a team lead, expert or manager, he participated in more than 30 projects implemented by Ukrainian CSOs with the support of international donors.

Since January 2017, as an expert in sectoral policies (as a part of the EU-funded Association4U Project), he has been assisting the Ukrainian government in the implementation the EU-UA Association Agreement. Over this time, he has most actively cooperated with the Office of the Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration (2017-2019) and the Government Office for the Coordination of European and Euro-Atlantic Integration (since 2019). In particular, he participated in the development and maintaining the Government electronic system “Pulse of Agreement”, which is used to monitor the fulfillment of Ukraine’s obligations under the AA / DCFTA.

As an expert was also engaged to perform short-term tasks and assignments within the framework of projects implemented by the East Europe Foundation and EGAP Program, International Renaissance Foundation, OSCE Project Coordinator in Ukraine, Chemonics International, etc.