Luben Panov served as the director of Bulgarian Center for Not-for-Profit Law (BCNL) between its founding in 2001 and 2009. From 2009 to 2014 he served as Program Director and was then appointed Executive Director again at the beginning of 2015 and served through March 2016. Luben will continue to be involved in BCNL programs as a consultant.

Luben has been a member of the Public Council of the Civil Society Committee with the 39th National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria and the Civic Council with the Minister of European Integration. He has worked on issues such as registration and operation of non-government organizations (NGOs), taxation and fiscal framework for civil society, tax incentives for donations, and social contracting. He has worked in a number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He has participated in the drafting of rules for distribution of state grants in Albania, analyzed the legal framework for NGOs in Armenia and the mechanisms for social contracting in Kazakhstan and is currently involved in projects in Azerbaijan and Moldova.

Luben also works as a Program Consultant with ECNL, where he is helping to develop a monitoring framework for the CSO environment in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

Luben has a B.A. in Business Administration from the Sofia University (1997), M.A. in Macroeconomics from the Sofia University (1998) and an M.A. in Human Rights from the Central European University in Budapest (1999).