Manuela RODRIGUEZ: New Secretary Executive of WAPES

Eneo XHEMALAJ

Eneo joined the Executive Secretariat in January 2024 as Management Assistant. He studied translation and interpreting. He then worked for almost 6 years at RSC Anderlecht, where he led several projects aimed at helping young people combine top-level sport with school. He then took on new challenges at Regus, a British company specializing in office rental and coworking spaces.

Subsequently, Eneo joined McKinsey & Company, an American consulting firm, and also contributed to the development of two small start-ups.

Barbora SVOSJE

Before joining WAPES in January 2024, Barbora’s been deeply involved in the dynamic world of Public Employment Services (PES), both at the Member State and European Commission levels. She’s worn many hats, from representing the Czech Ministry of Labour and social Affairs in the PES network and WAPES, to being a policy officer and program manager in DG EMPL. Serving in the European PES network secretariat team, she was facilitating the implementation of the PES network and EURES work programmes. As part of the Czech and Slovak Country teams, she was actively involved in bringing the EU 2020 Strategy and European Semester to life.

Along the way, she’s gathered a wealth of expertise in employment, social, skills, youth policies, mobility and ESF+ programme management. Building partnerships and networks, and coordinating activities at the EU and international level, like mutual learning events and conferences, has been both a joy and a privilege. Joining the WAPES executive secretariat feels like closing the circle of the exciting parts of her professional journey.

Sophie ESPOSITO

During her 25-year career in private and public companies throughout France, Sophie has held positions in marketing, sales, administration, finance and training.
This wide range of experience, combined with her Franco-Spanish Master’s degree in International Business, is particularly valuable when she brings her versatility to WAPES as an administrative assistant.
In her spare time, she enjoys cooking and baking, but also taking advantage of her move to Brussels to discover Belgium and its incredible cultural diversity.

Manuela RODRIGUEZ

The Secretary Executive supports the WAPES mission and assists the President and Vice-Presidents in coordinating events organized by the regions. She oversees relations with partners and the smooth running of hybrid activities aimed at forging links of cooperation between the different continents.

To this end, she assumes operational and financial responsibility for the Brussels-based Executive Secretariat and manages the team of collaborators and consultants.

Manuela RODRIGUEZ joined the INPA (international non-profit association) on November 1, 2023, on behalf of SYNERJOB, the non-profit association of Belgian public employment services (PES). She is seconded by ACTIRIS, the Brussels public employment service.

Over the past 25 years, she has specialized in strategic communication and intercultural project facilitation in the academic, public and private sectors. She has worked in Belgium and the Netherlands for the Spanish Embassy and for a number of consulting firms. In Brussels, she has worked for Actiris, Bruxelles Formation and the City of Brussels.

Manuela holds a degree in Applied Linguistics (Vlekho Brussels), complemented by European Studies (College of Europe Bruges) and Leadership training (Solvay Business School Brussels).

An avid newspaper reader, she is interested in all aspects of society and culture, promoting a high-performance, healthy atmosphere at work, based on a balance between professional and private life.

Oussama LAKHMIRI

Born in Fez, the spiritual and scientific capital of Morocco, where every alleyway in the medina tells a story going back more than 1230 years, he finds himself immersed in his environment. He went on to study political science and international relations to broaden his horizons and gain a better understanding of socio-political phenomena.

An enthusiast of lifelong learning, he favors action-based training, which yields better results in the workplace in terms of usefulness and skills acquired. With over 25 years’ professional experience, including 21 years with the Moroccan Public Employment Service ANAPEC, he has risen through the ranks with the latter since its creation, managing numerous projects considered complex, given the diversity of themes, participants and locations involved in each one. Projects that also require a mastery of project management techniques and international cooperation mechanisms. Nevertheless, these projects are very successful.

He has held a number of positions of responsibility in the Trade, Job Market, Marketing and Communications. His current position within the Moroccan PES is “Head of Communication and Institutional Relations Division”, which is part of ANAPEC’s strategic processes.

Ulf NORMAN

Ulf joined the WAPES executive secretariat in October 2023.

Ulf is seconded by Arbetsförmedlingen, the Swedish public employment service.

At Arbetsförmedlingen, he has held a variety of positions, including consultant, key account manager, international coordinator, project manager and international business manager (interim). Ulf lived and worked in Tunisia and France from 1988 to 2001 before returning to Sweden. He joined Arbetsförmedlingen in 2006.

He studied at Stockholm University, for example.

French with EU studies, French, culture and society and Interculturality and communicative competence.

Amandine MOIGNARD

Amandine joined the WAPES Executive Secretariat in June 2023 as Projects Director.

After studying international relations in Paris (France), Amandine chose Madrid (Spain) to complete her studies with a Masters in international cooperation and project management. It was here that she began a career in managing development projects with a consulting firm and then with a Spanish public foundation that promotes peer-to-peer technical cooperation for public administration. She then worked for 2 years in Bamako (Mali) for a family planning NGO, before finally returning to Europe, first in Paris with an experience with France Médias Monde and then in Brussels.

It was her experience at SOCIEUX+ that introduced her to the work of public employment services and made her want to join the WAPES family.

Nicole CLOBES

Nicole joined WAPES Executive Secretariat in March 2023.

Nicole is seconded by the German Federal Employment Agency.

In the German Public Employment Service (Bundesagentur für Arbeit) she has been working in various positions such as Placement Officer, Vocational Advisor, Team Lead and most recently at the European Representation of the German Federal Employment Agency.

Nicole has been living and studying in the USA for a couple years. Since 2021 she lives together with her family in Belgium.

Nicole holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication and a Master’s degree in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Suzanne Kraatz

Susanne is a political scientist by profession having further qualifications in career guidance, demographic counselling for employers and adult learning. She has been cooperating with WAPES since 2005 before joining the Secretariat in September 2020 as an interim senior consultant and she is back since November 2022 as a permanent consultant. She has worked for more than 20 years in the field of labour market integration, modernising PES business models, career management, training of PES staff and employment policies.

Her experience includes: building up a European mutual learning programme for PES at the European Commission; benchmarking and benchlearning among PES; elaborating a European reference competence profile for PES counsellors; developing the European Youth Guarantee and implementing it with the European PES network; strategies for labour integration of vulnerable groups; gender mainstreaming in PES; analysis and coordination of negotiations on EU legal acts for the Employment and Social Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (e.g. Directive on Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions).

Until 2022, she was a member of the Cedefop CareersNet as a country expert for Germany and cooperates with the ILO, OECD and the European Training Foundation. She has been seconded by the Federal Employment Agency Germany.

WAPES offers by its members

Collaboration with the world-wide network of PES through:
Communicating and sharing articles, publications, videos, etc. about your work. In this way, we will keep WAPES’ members informed about PES news via the website, social networks, and our newsletter, in the three official languages (Spanish, English, French).

Active participation of members in various training workshops, conferences, surveys, polls, social networks, etc.

The occasional provision of collaborators to take part in the AMSEP’s various activities contributing thereby to the improvement of good practices.

The designation by each affiliated PES of a contact person, a reference person representing his or her organisation, to set up and maintain a privileged and regular contact with the Executive Secretariat.

The provision of specialised staff (IT, economists, consultants, etc.) to participate in the daily management of the association and the executive secretariat, from Brussels or from the home country, over long or short periods of time.

The transmission of information by PES members to all their collaborators and staff, within their own institutions but also to their partners to publicize WAPES and its work locally, nationally, and internationally.

Vidéos de présentation

Fumie HIGASHIRA

Fumie joined the secretariat during September 2021. Fumie joined WAPES in September 2021. She is a seconded official from MHLW (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan) to WAPES, as a coordinator of Japan-WAPES Joint Project.

In this project (2021-2023), she works with Cambodian PES (the National Employment Agency). She is going to develop a performance assessment framework based on the recommendation report of the 1st phase of the project. She has been engaged with career guidance measures to help practitioners including those in the PES, as well as planning training sessions in the International Training Center of ILO (2013-2015). She also has a Master of Arts in Lifelong Learning and Career Studies.

She enjoys flower arrangement (Sogetsu school of ikebana) and is looking forward to visiting museum of fine arts and ballet spectacles in Europe.

Thierry HUORT

Thierry joined the secretariat at the beginning of January 2020 .

Thierry HUORT has been seconded by Pôle emploi, the French public employment service, to WAPES since January 2020.

For more than 35 years in the employment service, he has held various positions from employment consulting to management to human resources project management.

Since 1997, Pôle emploi has also entrusted him with missions in the context of international cooperation. In this respect, he has been involved in various countries/regions: Albania, Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, New Caledonia and Morocco, for which he led a Morocco-European Union institutional twinning project for the benefit of ANAPEC (Morocco PES) in cooperation with Arbetsformedlingen (Sweden PES) and GVG (Germany Assoc.).

Born in Algeria, he lived in Ivory Coast until the age of 18. After initial technical studies (Electronics), and resuming on-the-job studies, he holds a University Diploma in Educational Sciences (DUPHA “Human Potential and Learning”).

Hilde d'AUBIOUL

Responsible for the organization, framing and deployment of the SamPES project.

Hilde d’Aubioul joined WAPES in July 2019. She has been seconded from VDAB, the Belgian Public Employment Services of Flanders.

In July 2004 she started at VDAB as a mediator for job seekers. In October 2013 she switched jobs and started as Strategic Policy Advisor at the central office of VDAB. In this position she fulfilled a wide range of tasks and responsibilities. Among others things, she contributed to the development of the long-term strategy of WAPES and was a TAIEX speaker for the European Commission.

Prior to her career at VDAB she took on various positions in different sectors: plant virus researcher, banking etc.

Hilde has a master of science in Educational Studies and a bachelor in Biochemistry.

In her free time she likes to travel an meet other cultures .

Amada HERNANDO-PASCUAL

After studying translation and communication, Amada worked in various organisations and companies around the world, including the last 2 years abroad in a tourist office in a beautiful remote village in los Picos de Europa, Asturian mountains.

Back in Belgium, she has been working for almost ten years at the Permanent Representation of Belgium to the EU, in the Migration and Home Affairs Service

In March 2020, a week before the start of the Covid-19 health crisis, Amada joined the Executive Secretariat team with great pleasure, as assistant to the consultants.

Mother of 2 grandchildren, passionate about foreign languages, naturopathy, and music of all kinds, she spends her free time learning, perfecting and sharing her knowledge or discoveries, and working as a volunteer for the smooth running of a Brussels concert hall.

A Spanish national, her working languages are Spanish, French, and English (Swedish in learning process).

Pierre-Alain Vandewalle

Pierre-Alain joined WAPES Executive Secretariat in February 2015.

Initially Pierre-Alain went for a three-month internship in Venezuela for his degree in Communication. However he decided to stay in this country for 12 years.

In 2014 he returned to Belgium. Developing a passion for audiovisual and cultural work, Pierre Alain first collaborated on the creation of a community television in a popular district of Maracay in Venezuela. Then together with his Venezuelan wife, he created a non-profit Socio-Cultural organization called “Fundación Socio-Cultural AUTANA” of which he was the director for 10 years. The Fundación organizes free workshops for audiovisual production, films and documentaries projections in popular neighborhoods called “barrios”, produces video reports and helps other organizations to emerge.

Pierre-Alain also holds a degree in education with mention in Cultural Development from the Experimental Nacional University “Simón Rodríguez” in Caracas, Venezuela. In his last position he worked for two years as a communication expert for the National Experimental University for Security “UNES” for the Aragua and Carabobo regions in Venezuela.

Pierre-Alain spends his leisure time with his two children helping them discover the Belgian culture.

Jacqueline Mukamusana

Jacqueline joined the WAPES Secretariat in June 2014.

Jacqueline is journalist by profession. She has worked for over 20 years in various organizations both nationally and internationally such as The Voice of Women association, Food for the Hungry International (FHI), Young women’s Christian Association (YWCA). She fulfilled respectively different functions such as administrative and financial assistant, management assistant and general secretary.

In June 2012, as part of her training in secretarial work, Jacqueline did an internship at WAPES, where she supported the Executive Secretariat with preparations of the World Congress in Seoul.

In addition to her mother tongue, Jacqueline speaks and writes English and French.

Jacqueline is mother of 4 children, 2 girls and 2 boys.

Eve-Marie MOSSERAY

The Executive Secretary leads the Executive Secretariat and is responsible for the function of the Secretariat. The Secretariat supports the organisation and assists the President and Vice-Presidents in the approved WAPES activities set up for the regions.

Executive Secretary, responsible for the function of the Secretariat, the specific activities, the cooperation between the different regions and the cooperation with partners.

Eve-Marie MOSSERAY joined WAPES last August 2018. She has been assigned by SYNERJOB and seconded from FOREM, the Belgian Public Employment Service for French-speaking Wallonia.

For the last 12 years, she has held the position of head of the training centers of Walloon Brabant (training for jobseekers and workers) with a wide representation of the activity sectors. Prior to this, she held various positions in banking, cultural and temporary employment sectors.

Eve-Marie has a master in Political Science and International Relations. She is interested in culture and she likes to go hiking in her free time.

WAPES offers for its members

Solidarity among PES to provide answers to the challenges they face

Connection and networking between the different PESs

A common database (contacts, skills, …)

Linking up users with PES

A cooperation fund and a participation fund so that all PES can join in our activities

PES evaluation: peer review, surveys, polls, investigations, in-depth analyses, etc

International conferences: face-to-face or online conferences

Pooling and sharing of good practices, benchlearning, with, notably, the SamPES project

A constantly updated website with documentation and information about our members and our activities

A ambitious digital platform

Dynamic social networks

wapes@wapes.org

Manuela RODRIGUEZ: New Secretary Executive of WAPES

Thank you for signing up! You are now subscribed to our newsletter.