Isabelle is a Project Manager who was heavily involved in the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2024, both in the MIRS back office and in the coordination of liaison officers at numerous events.

Isabelle worked for over 20 years in the European Parliament as a lawyer before joining MIRS for the French Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2022. Passionate about European affairs, she has acquired a sound knowledge of the workings of the European institutions and EU policies in general.
Isabelle holds a Master’s degree in domestic public law from Aix-Marseille III in France.

A native French speaker, Isabelle is fluent in English and has a basic understanding of German.

Project Assistant

Igor is the team’s most recent addition, having started his work as project assistant in 2024. Prior to joining MICHEL IRS, he worked as an event coordinator for EstAdventure, an adventure travel company based in Belgrade, Serbia. There, he was responsible for logistical aspects pertaining to team building events for corporate entities.

A native speaker of Serbo-Croatian, Igor is also fluent in English and German, and possesses basic communication skills in French.

Associate Advisor

Richard Calland has thirty years of experience in law, politics and sustainability, and acts as a content and strategy advisor to MIRS. He is now based at the University of Cape Town (UCT) as an Associate Professor in Public Law and as a part of the academic leadership of its SDG initiative. As a specialist in transparency law and policy he currently serves as a member of the World Bank’s Independent Access to Information Appeals Board.

A programme director at leading African democracy think-tank Idasa from 1995-2011, Prof Calland has founded a number of organisations including of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution and the Open Democracy Advice Centre. A prominent political analyst, and a columnist for the Mail & Guardian newspaper in South Africa since 2001, he is the author of a several books including Make or Break: How the next three years will shape South Africa’s next three decades, Anatomy of South Africa: Who holds the power? and The Zuma Years. He is a Founding Partner of political risk consultancy The Paternoster Group: African Political Insight, and a long-time advisor to a number of multinational companies.

In the field of sustainability strategy, he is a Fellow of the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership and as such has served as a member of faculty on numerous leadership programmes for organisations such as the African Development Bank, PWC, Network Rail, Namdeb, Tata and Nedbank. In addition, he is the co-director of the African Climate Finance Hub – the only African-based organisation with a specialist track record of working with governmental and development partners on climate finance in Africa.

Associate Advisor

Dr Nomfundo Xenia Ngwenya is the Chief Strategy Officer for Ntsele Global, a small, black-owned South African investment group. She has worked extensively across the African continent as a senior government official, policy researcher and businesswoman.

She was previously Chief Director for African Economic Integration at the National Treasury, where she represented South Africa at key continental multilateral economic institutions such as the African Development Bank, the African Development Fund, the International Monetary Fund’s Afritac-South Steering Committee, the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). She previously chaired SACU’s Finance and Audit Committee and was South Africa’s Deputy at the ADF, where she co-chaired (with the UK) the working group on mobilising financial resources for Africa’s low-income countries.

Prior to her appointment as Chief Director, she was Director: Global Development Policy, where she headed National Treasury’s BRICS unit. In this role, she oversaw the formulation of South Africa’s negotiating position at the New Development Bank (NDB) and was part of the South African delegation to the inaugural negotiations of the NDB. After leaving National Treasury, she was appointed Programme Head for the the DfID-funded Globabl Economic Governance programme, where she oversaw research on regional trade, illicit financial flows and infrastructure financing. She has also headed the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA’s) South African Foreign Policy and African Drivers programme, served as an analyst at the South African Secret Service and lectured at the University of South Africa.

Dr Ngwenya is a member of the Institute of Directors and a Non-Executive Director of the Johannesburg Development Agency. She holds a PhD in International Studies from the University of Cambridge, MSc in Politics of the World Economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), MA and BA (Hons) in International Studies from the University of Stellenbosch and BA (Political Science) from the University of Port Elizabeth.