Advisory Panel

Former and Honorary Director General of European Investment Bank (EIB)

Tom Hackett was, until August 2012 when he retired, a Member of the Board of Directors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Executive Director of the European Investment Bank (EIB) with a remit to help develop activity between the two international financial institutions in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine.
Before joining the EBRD in May 2010, Tom Hackett was Director-General at EIB from July 2005 and was in charge of its lending to the 27 Member States of the EU, Turkey and the Western Balkans. During that period, and especially in response to the financial and economic crisis, EIB’s European annual lending rose to 75 billion euro. Prior to that, he was in charge of EIB lending in various EU regions including Poland and the Nordic countries (from 2004), Italy and Greece (from 1999) and the UK (from 1994). Tom Hackett began his EIB career in 1981 in capital markets and his banking career in 1968 with S. G. Warburg.
Tom Hackett was a trustee of Fulham Palace Trust until he reached the renewal limit and remains a trustee of Bishop Creighton House, Fulham, London. He is a Director of Retail Charity Bonds Plc, a platform to enable charities to obtain long-term funding for self-financing projects.

Board Member of Europa Nostra

Laurent Lévi-Strauss is Chargé de Mission to the President of the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris and former Chargé de Mission to the Director of the project for the new Musée de l’Homme (Museum of Man). He is Member of the Board of Europa Nostra, and, also, member of the Commission of Ethics for the Museums of the City of Geneva.
During some 15 years, he worked at UNESCO, namely as Deputy Director of the Division of Cultural Heritage, where he supervised the implementation of numerous international safeguarding projects, as for Angkor, Afghanistan, Iraq and Bosnia and Herzegovina, among others, and later the operational and juridical activities for the support of museums and the safeguarding of cultural objects, including the implementation of international conventions. Previously, he worked at the French Ministry of Culture, as Deputy-Director of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then as Director of the Office of the President of the public television channel Antenne 2 (now France 2).
He holds a diploma of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Paris and a doctorate (PhD) in Sociology from the University of Paris X. He has published several books and articles concerning cultural heritage and its preservation.

Council Member of Europa Nostra.

A professional architect (McGill University), Laurie Neale wrote her Master’s thesis (Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, University College London) on the effects of our urban architecture and spaces on individual behaviour and social interaction through the theory and methods of Space Syntax. Living in Europe (The Hague, Brussels), she has worked for fifteen years on the safeguarding of cultural heritage at Europa Nostra: as manager of the EU Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Awards; as head of Communications; as head of the Heritage in Danger programme; and as member of its advisory Council since 2012. She has been an expert evaluator of cultural heritage projects and advisor for a number of European and International stakeholders (EEA+Norway Grants FMO, ASEF, Europeana …). She served on the Netherlands National Commission to UNESCO’s Thematic Group Post-Conflict Middle-East & North Africa, and is a member of ICOMOS Nederland.
Also living in Montreal Canada, Laurie is engaged with local and national heritage and sustainable city communities while pursuing a Fine Arts degree in sculpture at Concordia University. She works in multiple disciplines and materials (metal, wood, stone, fibres …) and focuses on conveying messages of social-spatial dialectics.

Born in Madrid in 1957, Pedro Ponce de León studied Architecture at the Politechnical University in Madrid, reaching the degree of Architect in 1979 and Doctorate (with Cum Laude honours). Between 1980 and 1982 he worked as architect of the Spanish Archeological Mission in Jordan. In 1984 he received a scholarship from a Private Foundation in order to study Architectural Restoration in the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) at the Spanish Academy in Rome. His study about its cloisters was published in 1986 in the journal of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

He founded “Pedro Ponce de León, Architects” in 1980, with a deep specialisation in cultural and architectural heritage activities, and large experience in the intervention on Heritage buildings and monuments, from the preliminary diagnose to the Executive Project design and also, the project management works, providing technical assistance as well as criteria, building procedures, planning and economic audit.

More than 40 design and executive projects developed in different countries (Spain, Cuba, Albania, Greece, Mali, Western Balkan countries, etc. See page http://pedroponcedeleon.es/en/). Pedro Ponce de Leon has participated as an expert in some missions for the 7 Most Endangered programme of Europa Nostra, including Gjirokastra (Albania), Venice Lagoon (Italy), the Mafra National Palace, the Monastery and Church of Jesus in Sétubal (Portugal). He also has prepared feasibility reports for the Roman Amphitheatre in Dürres (Albania) and the Historic City of Kastoria (Greece). He is a consultant architect for the Division of Cultural and Natural Heritage (Council of Europe), consultant for different agencies: AECI (Spanish Agency for International Cooperation), CEB; Member of the Royal Academy of History and the Spanish-Belgium Academy. Member of ICOMOS (Spanish Council Committee), ICOM.

Board Member of Europa Nostra

Paolo Vitti is an architect and historian with over thirty years of experience in the areas of Ancient and Modern architecture and the restoration of cultural heritage sites. Vitti presently holds teaching appointments in both Italian and American universities. His work includes collaborations with national and international institutions, in the academic and professional field, as well as courses on conservation for architects and archaeologists of the Moroccan Ministry of Culture.
Vitti has authored many essays on restoration, museology, history of architecture and ancient construction, and specialises in the study of Mediterranean architecture, having made important achievements in the study of Ancient architecture. He has actively contributed to the activities of the Italian School of Archaeology in Athens since 2001.
His studies, reflected in more than 50 articles and a monograph, have greatly contributed to scholarship in the history of architecture. His research on Roman architecture in Greece and on the Mausoleum of Hadrian received the Grand Prix of the EU Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award in 2014 and the L’Erma di Bretschneider Archaeology Award. His design for the restoration of the Armenian Church and Monastery in Nicosia, Cyprus, received an EU Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award in 2015.
Paolo Vitti has been a Board Member of Europa Nostra since 2018.