16th annual NALED Assembly: WELCOMING THE CHANGE

Christopher R. Hill arrived in Belgrade on March 31, 2022. He previously served as the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Korea, Poland, and Macedonia, as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and as Head of the U.S. delegation to the 6 Party Talks on North Korea. Earlier in his diplomatic career, Hill was the special envoy for the Kosovo crisis and prior to that was a member of the U.S. negotiating team whose efforts led to the Dayton Peace Agreement, ending the Bosnian war. Following his retirement from the Foreign Service in 2010, Hill was Dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, and then Chief Advisor to the Chancellor for Global Engagement and Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy, at the University of Denver.  In 2021, Hill was named the George Ball Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.  In October 2021, he was called upon to return to diplomatic service when President Biden nominated him to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Serbia. Hill earned a B.A. at Bowdoin College and an M.S. at the Naval War College.  The recipient of numerous honors, including the Robert S. Frasure Award for Peace Negotiations and the Secretary of State Distinguished Service Award. Hill speaks Serbian, Polish, Macedonian and French. He is joined in Belgrade by his wife, Julie.

Vladislav Cvetkovic is Director of Advisory Services in “PricewaterhouseCoopers” in Belgrade since 2013. He served as the Director of Privatization Agency from 2009 to 2013, managing all activities on the Serbian privatization agenda, including the improvement of privatization-related legislation. From 2001 to 2007 he was engaged in the National Bank of Serbia and the Agency for Deposit Insurance, as Advisor to the Governor and the leading advisor for privatization of banks. During this period, he led a number of projects related to banking sector reform and was directly engaged in formulating and successful implementation of the strategy and privatization of significant financial institutions in the country, also leading on several of the largest privatization projects in Serbia so far. From 2004 to 2005 he was a Council member in the National Bank of Serbia, and the Managing Board President in Komercijalna banka AD Beograd from 2006 to 2009. His professional career started in financial consulting in “Deloitte”, Belgrade, in 1994-2000, as well as in academia, as he was a lecturer at the Faculty of Economy in Belgrade, at the Business Finance and Accounting department.

Dragan Penezić holds a PhD on the topic "The modern concept of business through the development of Public and Private Partnership (Comparative study of PPP models in Europe - Solution for Serbia)" in 2010, and graduated from the Faculty of Economics in Belgrade in 1999. He joined British American Tobacco in 2016, where he started as a Government Affairs Manager and currently holds position of the Head of Legal and External Affairs for Serbia and Montenegro. Prior to his career in BAT, he held the position of the Secretary General of the Commission for the Protection of Competition of the Republic of Serbia, where he spent seven years and has been a member of the Negotiating Group for Chapter VIII (Competition and State Aid) in the process of Serbia's accession to the European Union. Dragan has extensive experience in public administration, first as Assistant Minister in the sector for concessions and public - private partnerships in the Ministry of International Economic Relations, and then in the Ministry of Trade and Services as Assistant Minister in the sector for trade, prices and consumer protection. He is a President of the NALED Assembly since 2017 and President of  FIC’s Anti-Illicit Committee from 2018.

Violeta started building expertise in local economic and rural development and standardization, upon graduation in 1998, as an expert and team leader in USAID programs in Serbia and the region, through the design and implementation of complex development projects worth over 10 million dollars. As the first employee of NALED, and its Executive Director since July 2007, she was instrumental in growing an independent membership organization, which later grew into the largest public-private association focusing on building a favorable business environment in Serbia. She is a graduate philologist and gained further education in the field of economics and project management in specialized training and study programs in the United States and Europe. She is engaged as a motivational speaker and moderator at professional conferences around the topic of women's entrepreneurship and leadership in the country and abroad. She has gained international experience as a consultant in the field of certification and intellectual property protection. She is a member of the Regional Council as the umbrella body of the Network for a Favorable Business Environment, which brings together state institutions and sector organizations from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro to institutionalize mechanisms for cooperation and strengthening the competitiveness of the region. She actively contributes to the preservation of traditional heritage of Serbia and employment programs for women through the role of the founder and president of Ethno Network.