“If you are passionate about making your contribution for a better world… persist and be aware that [this is] a difficult field. Working in the field of International Relations can make you pessimistic sometimes, but… what we do today is history in 10 years, so our passion and commitment and skills are very important [every day].”

 

 

Dr NADJA MILANOVA is Officer at the Building Integrity (BI) Programme within NATO’s Political Affairs and Security Policy Division. She is in charge of Building Integrity in Allied and some partner countries in the Western Balkans, Partners around the Globe, and Afghanistan. Prior to that, she was Head of the Bilateral and Regional Cooperation Department at the Ministry of Defence of Bulgaria. In this capacity, among other things, Nadja spearheaded the project of Building Integrity in the framework of the South Eastern Defence Ministerial (SEDM) Process. She also led the Female Leaders in Security and Defence project, with Bulgaria as Lead Nation within the NATO Smart Defence Initiative. Throughout her career, Nadja has worked successively for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria, the Secretariat of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), the Prague Office of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and NATO’s Public Diplomacy Division. Nadja also has experience in the field of human rights and in the academia with research on conflict resolution. She holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Exeter, United Kingdom and an MA in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, USA.