Margarida Ribeiro has a degree in International relations, a Masters in European political studies and a post-graduate degree in management – University of Lisbon and different innovation and digital transformation courses in INSEAD and Harvard Business School. She started working in the Economic Affairs Cabinet of the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and then worked for 5 years in a management consultancy firm, reengineering firms' processes and managing European projects. After that she took a post in the Portuguese Council of Ministers and then Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, to support the Director-General for ICT and for Science policy, where she dealt with international and interinstitutional affairs. She was the national representative in several EU Committees, UN agencies and ITU in the digital policies. She was leading the innovation section of the Portuguese Digital Agenda, supporting the national Smart Specialization process. Since 2014, Margarida worked for the European Commission, DG Research & Innovation, both in Policy coordination and B Open Innovation and Open Science Directorate. She was the EC contact person for EIROforum organisations, on international cooperation & a member of the EC Horizon Europe strategic planning task force. In the European Commission DG Informatics, she lead the design of the European Commission digital strategy and she leads the Digital Strategy sector in the Corporate Digital transformation Unit.

Leontina leads the Interoperability Unit at the European Commission, in charge of policy and solutions for digital government. She works towards creating an Interoperable Europe through policies and common platforms, in partnership with public administrations in Member States and an active community of experts in interoperability.

Leontina has more than 15 years of experience in the public and private sector in the digital domain. She held different roles from software engineer to leading teams developing data and AI services, mobile solutions to customer relationship management and designing digital strategies for medium-sized to large organisations.

Leontina holds a degree in Information Technology from the Faculty of Cybernetics, Statistics and Information Technology in Bucharest and a M.Sc. in Financial Economics from Goteborg University.

Since September 2013, I am working as a scientific officer for the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), where I was already employed for three years as a post-doc (2009-2012) and six months as an intern (2005). My career focuses on multi-disciplinary interoperability, open innovation, and regulatory learning. The underlying interests include (i) research on public governance and citizen science, (ii) policy, especially digital transitions, Responsible Research and Innovation, and public sector reforms; and (iii) the uptake of emerging technologies, including virtual worlds, artificial intelligence and others.