Our local staff in Cairo:

1. Gerrit Jan Schep, Country Director
2. Amira El-Serafy, Branch Manager
3. Ahmad Mehrez, Business Development Manager

Gerrit Jan dedicated most of his career as consultant and manager to decentralization, public administration reform (PAR) and capacity building for the Dutch government and municipalities. Since the early nineties he also used his knowledge and experience in international projects. This was a win-win situation for himself and his clients, because working simultaneously on the Dutch and international level offered mutual benefit from cross-over experiences in reforms and governance. From 2015 onwards he decided to follow his dream and focused fulltime on international projects, as consultant and team leader. He worked and works on assignments for the EU/ Worldbank/ UN/ Dutch Government, pre-dominantly in the following countries: Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Mali, Ukraine, Kosovo, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro and more.With his teams he likes to convince our partners and beneficiaries that change is possible and to empower them to make change: to improve public services for citizens, to include citizens in public policy design and implementation, and to upgrade the competencies and capacities of public administrations. In his previous and current role as team leader of projects project in Egypt (EU, WB, UN), and as senior expert in Ukraine (USAID) and Kosovo (EU) he is focused to achieve exactly this. With his Dutch experience in governance he has a lot to share.

Ahmad Mehrez is a management expert focused on improving the performance and public outreach of subnational governments and local NGOs. He started his career in 2006 in the hospitality sector before he became a professional translator and interpreter, which is the capacity he joined VNGi in  by 2014. Shortly after he made a shift to the public management and policy field. Ahmad worked with VNGi through several programs in Egypt aimed at public and local administration reform as well as women empowerment.