About Us

The European AI & Society Fund pools resources from 17 diverse funding partners to mobilise a powerful public interest community in Europe fighting for Artificial Intelligence that serves people, society and planet.

Since 2020, our partners have contributed over €10.5 million to support the European AI & Society Fund’s mission. With that money we have supported over 65 organisations from around Europe to shape Artificial Intelligence to better serve people and society, and launched the Build & Breakthrough Initiatives. Discover our impact in our 2024 Annual Report.

 

We mobilise a powerful public interest community in Europe that can turn the tide so that Artificial Intelligence serves people, society and planet.

By forging a collective strategy, the European AI & Society Fund directs money quickly to where it’s most needed, grows and sustains available funding for the field, and builds civil society and philanthropic networks to address this fast-growing challenge. 

 

We work in Europe where advanced AI regulation, a fertile political context and a maturing civil society landscape create opportunities for new visions for AI to flourish. We focus on addressing narrative, policy and regulatory capture, where civil society has legitimacy and credibility to act.

 

The Fund is run by a small, expert team and hosted by the Network of European Foundations.

We award grants

We award grants to technology and social justice experts and advocates across Europe to shape debate, inform policy and secure accountability around AI, and nurture their collective strength.

Since 2020 we’ve awarded €10.5 million to over 65 organisations across 26 countries. We foster collaboration and skills so that the community works effectively together to provide a counterweight to corporate and state agendas.

We fundraise

We fundraise from partners with diverse areas of expertise to grow resources for the Fund and for the wider field.

Each of our partners join our Steering Committee to guide our work and learn among peers. We have 17 partner foundations and our annual income has grown from €1.5m to €5.5m since we launched in 2020.

We provide strategic leadership

We provide strategic leadership by sharing our expertise on the evolving AI debate in Europe, identifying opportunities to target funding and supporting our philanthropic and civil society networks to collaborate.

We publish research, share insights from our work and host meetings of funders and civil society groups to strategise collectively.

Our team

The fund is run by a team of five – Catherine Miller, Alexandra Toth, Peggye Totozafy, Līva Vikmane and Monika Ramos – with support from other members of the Network of European Foundations staff, as well as occasional external advisors.

Each of our funding partners takes part in our Steering Committee which helps set the strategic direction. Our current co-chairs are Guillermo Beltrà of Luminate and Carla Hustedt of Stiftung Mercator.

Catherine Miller

Director

catherine.miller@europeanaifund.org

Catherine leads the Fund’s team of six, making sure that everyone works in sync and looks after our strategic direction. Previously she worked in tech policy as Director of Policy and then CEO of Doteveryone, the responsible technology think tank, and as a consultant. Prior to that she had a career as an award-winning journalist for the BBC covering news and current affairs from around the world for TV, radio and online.

Catherine is based in Wuppertal, Germany.

Carla Hustedt

Co-Chair of the Steering Committee

Carla Hustedt is the director of the “Centre for Digital Society” at the Mercator Foundation. She has been working on the societal impact of digitalisation for several years, until April 2021 as the head of the Bertelsmann Foundation’s “Ethics of Algorithms” project. Carla Hustedt is a member of the advisory board of the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) and the initiative “SheTransformsIT. She holds a dual degree in Public Administration from the London School of Economics and the Hertie School of Governance with a focus on e-governance. In 2010 she founded the German-Ghanaian human rights organisation “Boa Nnipa”.

Portrait photo of Guillermo Beltra
Guillermo Beltrà

Co-Chair of the Steering Committee

Guillermo Beltrà is the Policy Director at Luminate Strategic Initiatives. Previously Guillermo led the Technology and Society team at the Open Society Foundation’s Europe and Central Asia Program. In the past Guillermo also led Access Now’s policy team globally, and before that, he was director of Legal and Economic Affairs at the European Consumer Organisation, where he led the policy and advocacy work on digital and technology policy.

Peggye Totozafy

Senior Partnerships Manager

peggye.totozafy@europeanaifund.org

Peggye looks after Fund’s partnerships and leads our fundraising efforts. Hailing from impact philanthropy, she specialises in pioneering approaches to boost corporate and foundation giving strategies. Previously, she served as both a fundraiser and a donors community builder at Epic Foundation, a global tech & impact-focused foundation. 

Her academic background includes a Master’s degree in International Relations with a focus on Humanitarian work from Sciences Po Paris, as well as a Master’s degree in Law with a focus on Tax & Wealth Management.

Peggye is based in Paris, France.

Līva Vikmane

Networks & Communications Manager

liva.vikmane@europeanaifund.org

Līva works with our community to facilitate learning and connections, and leads Fund’s communications. She comes from civil society sector, where she has held various roles doing policy, advocacy and campaigning. In her previous role at HateAid as EU policy and advocacy officer, she worked on the European tech policy and regulation, with a focus on gender-based online violence and users’ rights. She holds a Master’s degree in Digital Media, Ethics and Social Change from the University of Sussex.

Līva is based in Brussels, Belgium.

Alexandra Toth

Programme Manager

Alexandra.toth@europeanaifund.org

Alexandra manages and innovates our grantmaking practices, and looks after monitoring, learning and evaluation of our work. Previously, she worked in the field of cultural diplomacy. Prior to that she worked in the government affairs team of a tech company and in the European Parliament.  She holds a Master’s degree in European Studies from ULB (Univesité Libre de Bruxelles).  Alexandra is fascinated by digital technologies and their implications on society.

Alexandra is based in Brussels, Belgium.

Monika Ramos

Programme and Grants Officer

monika.ramos@nef-europe.org

Monika ensures our operations and administration run smoothly, supporting effective grant-making. She brings extensive experience in project and programme management, previously serving as Project Manager for the European Judicial Training Network (EJTN) for three years. There, she organised training sessions on Criminal Justice and Judicial Training for judges, prosecutors, and courts.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts in French and a Bachelor’s in Political Science focused on Regional Integration Studies from the University of Texas at El Paso, along with a Master’s in Political Science from the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

Based in Brussels, Belgium, Monika is currently training for the 20 km of Brussels and enjoys spending time outdoors hiking—and soon camping—with her young daughter and husband.