ECONOMIC TEAM
The team of Finance Think is composed of prominent and repute economists, with thematic educational background and professional experience, as well vigilance to provide quality research and recommendations to economic policies.
Blagica Petreski, PhD
Chief Economist – Executive Director
Blagica is the Co-founder and Chief Economist – Executive Director of Finance Think. Her research interest involves an array of development topics like poverty, unemployment, gender inequalities, as well firms’ productivity and competitiveness. She is a committed advocate for effective economic policies as well actively engaged in shaping the public debate on economic issues in the country and the region. Blagica is the founder of Finance Impaq, the policy service platform of Finance Think.
She holds a position of Adjunct Associate Professor at the University American College Skopje, teaching Public Economic Policy. In the academic 2022/23, she has been a Fulbright scholar of the US Government, pursuing a research in public finance management at the University of Illinois in Chicago, USA. She is the Research Fellow of the Partnership of Economic Policy since 2023. Currently, Blagica serves a representative in the European Economic and Social Committee, a consultative body of the European Union that represents civil society organizations, and promotes participatory democracy by ensuring they have a voice in the legislative process.
She possesses a PhD in Economics from the University Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje, which included research stays at CERGE-EI Prague and the Slovak Academy of Sciences. She is also an alumnus of Young Transatlantic Innovative Leaders Initiative. Blagica received the Award for a Young Researcher of the year granted by the National Bank of Macedonia, as well the Award for best paper on risks and insurance by the Insurance Supervision Agency. Published widely, including 12 papers in prominent peer-reviewed journals indexed on the Web of Science.
Despina is the Co-founder, a member of the Executive Board and a Program Coordinator at Finance Think. Her research interest involves issues like macroeconomic policies, unemployment, sectoral economic policies, regional integration, applied econometrics and the like. Despina is actively engaged in the public debate on current economic topics. She has a PhD in Economics and an MSc in Finance at the University American College Skopje. In 2012, she won the Annual award for Young Researcher conferred by the National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia. She actively publishes, including 5 papers in journals indexed on the Web of Science.
Marija is an Economist I level at Finance Think. She’s a graduate from Ss. University Cyril and Methodius University – Skopje, where she majored Economics. With more than 4 years of experience in the civil society sector, Marija has worked on various projects on topics such as youth employment and social innovation. She is passionate about economic, social and environmental issues, with the aim of contributing towards sustainable development. Her interest in research spans over topics such as public and local finance, macroeconomics, welfare economics, financial markets, and institutions as well as behavioral economics.
Bojana Gjuroska is the Visualization and Public Image Specialist of Finance Think. She has a Bachelor Degree in Industrial Design from the University Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje. She is skillful in using a variety of visualization packages such as InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat and Dreamweaver. Other areas of her interest include photography and videography.
Sandra Sokolenko Todoroska is an Organizational and Administrative Associate at Finance Think. She is a MSc in Law at the University American College Skopje, and graduated from the University Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje. For a small part of her time, she also works on collecting primary data from areas that include macroeconomic policies, social protection, health care, education, unemployment and the like.
ASSOCIATES
Marjan is the Co-founder and Strategic Adviser at Finance Think. He is a Tenured Professor of Economics at the University American College Skopje and a Non-executive member of the Council of the National Bank of the Republic of North Macedonia. He holds a PhD from Staffordshire University, UK. His research focus is monetary policy, development and labor-market topics, all with a strong focus on transition economies. He published widely in international peer-reviewed journals: 44 articles in Web of Science – indexed journals and 860 citations on Google Scholar. For his research, he received numerous domestic and international awards. Prof. Petreski is the Associate Editor of the South East European Journal of Economics and Business, a prominent regional journal indexed in Journal Citation Reports (IF = 1), as well serves the editorial boards of other scientific journals.
Marjan served Career Integration Fellow of CERGE-EI in Prague (2012-2015: 2021-2024), Weiser Fellow of the University of Michigan, USA (2019), visiting researcher to the Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay (2016), Hitotsubashi University, Japan (2016), University of Jyväskylä, Finland (2021), while since 2018 serves Research Fellow of the Partnership for Economic Policies, Canada. He extensively works on the development agenda worldwide in wide geographic coverage, most notably – besides North Macedonia: Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Switzerland, Portugal, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Moldova, Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Myanmar and 14 countries in Western & Southern Africa. He is deeply engaged in the policy dialogue and public debate in the country and the Western Balkan region.
Ana is an expert in educational policies. She is currently a Full Professor at the University American College Skopje. She obtained her PhD from the School of Education, Queen’s University Belfast. Her professional engagements involve a number of research projects in Northern Ireland and the Republic of North Macedonia. Her work has been concentrated on educational reforms, exploring identity building as well as entrepreneurial intentions, organizational culture, human resource management and consumer behavior. She has attended a number of national and international conferences and published in renowned academic journals. She features with 23 articles published in peer-reviewed journal on the Web of Science. She is a permanent collaborator of Finance Think on educational issues and policies.
Maja is an expert in economic policies related to the health system. She is currently employed with a Insurance Supervision Agency and is an expert-lecturer at the University American College Skopje. She obtained her PhD from the University St. Cyril & Methodius in Skopje. Her research interest include health economics, public finance and debt, financial markets and institutions. She has been a research fellow of the American Studies Foundation (1998), Faculty of Economics, Vienna, Austria (1999), ENA, Paris, France (2002) Georgetown University, USA (2004).
Irena has an expertise in tax and finance policies. She holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University American College Skopje. For more than 20 years, Irena is a tax advisor to domestic and foreign clients, author of expert articles, manuals and reports / research studies in the field of taxation, finance, accounting (International Financial Reporting Standards – IFRS), human resources, corporate governance, anti-money laundering (AML), etc., and is a lecturer at seminars, trainings and workshops on topics in the same fields. She is the founder, manager and business consultant of the company for independent research and innovative solutions IRIS Consulting DOOEL Skopje. Since 2019, she has been an independent non-executive member of the Board of Directors of the Central Securities Depository Inc. Skopje.
Stefan is an external associate at Finance Think dealing with data collection and data analytics. He is also a Teaching Assistant at University American College Skopje. Stefan holds a MSc from University American College and is a PhD candidate at the same university. His research interests include monetary policy, financial markets and labor markets in transition economies. Tanevski currently has 4 publications in peer-reviewed international journals (2 publications in Web of Science – indexed journals). He is also a reviewer for the Southeast European Journal of Economics and Business, indexed in Journal Citation Reports (IF = 1).
Bojan is an external associate at Finance Think in the field of economic analysis and modeling of various social phenomena. He is an assistant professor at the University of St. Kliment Ohridski – Bitola. He holds a PhD in Finance from the University of Carlo Cattaneo (LIUC), Italy, and his research focus is on topics related to financial institutions and markets and the behavior of users of financial services. On the Web of Science, he features with 10 publications. He was a Turkish Government Scholar at Dokuz İle University, Turkey, a visiting researcher at Florida State University, USA, and a recipient of a study residency award at the Rosetta Institute-Sydney, Australia. Uses various economic packages and deals with complex network analyzes.