Vanja is working as a consultant in a Senior Legal Advisor position at ECNL. She is a civil society activist and was a Legal Advisor at Croatian organization GONG from 2001 – 2015 and a member of the Croatian Council on Open Government Partnership Initiative. She is also one of the founders and board members of the Solidarna Community Foundation in Croatia. Vanja has 16 years experience in legal review and analysis, research, consultancy, training, producing legal opinions, drafting legislative recommendations, advocacy campaigns, fundraising, developing civic education programs and toolkits.  Her fields of proficiency include enabling legal environment issues for civil society globally, regionally and nationally, expertise in linkage between counter-terrorism and anti-money laundering (CT/AML) policies and civic space impact, policy dialogue, civil participation in decision-making, freedom of information and proactive disclosure, public funding, strategies and action plans for civil society development and mechanisms of CSO-Government cooperation and its practical implementation. She mostly works on the UN (Human Rights Council and UN OHCHR in Geneva) and EU level, and country level in the EU, Balkan region, MENA, East Africa and Eurasia countries. Vanja holds a LLM degree in Public International Law from the University of Amsterdam and a Law Degree from the University of Zagreb.