Saying goodbye to our colleagues

Bérénice Cau

IFOAM Organics Europe says goodbye to Bérénice, our great team member. Bérénice coordinated our flagship project on pesticide contamination, our capacity building program, and enthusiastically supported the efforts in building relations with our partners and sponsors. Bérénice brought major contributions in keeping our project partners and sponsors engaged, structuring our new work areas, and improving collaboration ways with other teams – thanks to that we worked smarter! She was also a book lover and one of the last carnivores in our team. Bérénice, we are going to miss seeing you around in the office. We wish you success in your new job and have no doubt you will excel in your new role! 

Martin Sommer

We also say goodbye to our colleague Martin. With his educational background in both international relations and biology, he was the perfect fit to join the policy team. He worked on two very challenging topics: the GMOs & New Genomic Techniques file and the Plant Reproductive Material file. He coordinated internal groups of experts, collected feedback from the sector and built positions that then were put forward to the policy makers. With his work, he contributed significantly to our advocacy activities and made it with his good sense of humor. We wish him the best for the next step in his career.    

Marie Filippovits

Since September 2022, Marie Filippovits has supported the Research & Innovation unit at IFOAM Organics Europe (TP Organics and the Organic Farm Knowledge platform), as well as some policy and projects-related tasks. She has shown particular interest in further developing linkages with citizens and civil society organisations, which are crucial in the food systems transformation we are working for. We are thankful for her contributions and provocative thoughts and wish her all the best on her future path! 

Kalle Köster

Kalle Köster has been part of IFOAM Organics Europe’s policy unit from September to December 2022 as trainee through the Leonardo programme. Thanks to his background in agroecology, he contributed to drafting our positions papers on regenerative agriculture and integrated nutrients management action plan. He also undertook research on the EU taxonomy and managed our contribution to the Civil Dialogue Groups. Kalle decided to finish his Master’s degree in Psychology. We wish him luck and success for his future professional endeavours. He will be missed! 

Hannah Gläser

Hannah played a huge role in our fundraising efforts towards private foundations, and she even helped develop two new proposals. Along with Marie, our R&I volunteer, she also put together a document outlining the key arguments we want to use with foundations. Plus, she led some great workshops to help us work better as a team and to disseminate the internal strategy to make sure that our work is aligned with it!

We’re sad to see Hannah go, but we know she’s going to do great things wherever she ends up next. We’re so grateful for all the hard work she put in and the positive impact she had on our organization. Hannah, thank you for being such an awesome part of our team. We’ll miss you and wish you all the best in your future endeavors!

The volunteering project is funded by the European Solidarity Corps programme of the European Union. The sole responsibility of the content lies with the author and communication reflects only the author’s view. The National Agency and the European Commission are not responsible for any use that may be made of the information provided.