Ms. Ana Maria Andronic, the project’s local legal expert, having served as both a judge and a trainer at the NIM.  She also assists on court management and training issues. Ms. Andronic previously worked on the American Bar Association’s project in Romania, among other things helping to draft the Strategy for Reform of the Romanian Judiciary, giving her insight into the overall reform process in Romania.  She is a practicing attorney in Romania and has recently been admitted to practice in the United States.

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​Mr. Francesco Contini works as a researcher at the Research Institute on Judicial Systems of the National Research Council of Italy, where he coordinates the new research area on judicial performance evaluation. He studies the main sources of transformation of judicial systems, being the deployment of technological innovation, the implementation performance evaluation policies, or the introduction of new managerial principles into justice systems. He has coordinated various researches including ‘Building Interoperability for European Civil Proceedings on Line’, www.irsig.cnr.it/biecpo and ‘The quality of judicial systems: policies results and institutional settings’. As judicial reform advisor, he has worked with UNODC, UNDP, GIZ, IADB and the World Bank in the areas of e-justice and performance evaluation. He has published a number of articles and various books including ‘Judicial Evaluation. Traditions, Innovations and Proposals for Measuring the Quality of Courts Performance’, (VDM 2008) with Richard Mohr, and ‘ICT and innovation in the public sector’, edited with Giovan Francesco Lanzara (Palgrave 2009).​

 

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Judge Lavinia Curelea is currently the President of the 1st Civil Section of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, and has been working as a judge since 1989. She started her work as a judge with Suceava First Instance Court, and she had an evolution that propelled her in a short time period among the judges of Suceava Court of Appeals, where she worked for one year. The transfer of Judge Curelea to Bucharest Court of Appeals brought her 5 more years of experience with a court of appeals and, at the end of 2004, she joined the Supreme Court of Romania. Judge Curelea’s teaching and specialized research activities as a collaborator, moderator and member of various commissions have brought the national and international recognition of her qualities as a trainer in various areas, such as civil procedure law, judicial organization, ethics and professional deontology, which contributed to the improvement of the legal specialty training staff’s activities.​





Mark Dietrich, as Vice President of East-West Management Institute, directs EWMI’s office in Washington, DC, where he is responsible for proposal development and maintaining contacts with funders such as the United States Agency for International Development and the World Bank.  Mr. Dietrich also directs EWMI’s rule of law projects in Ecuador, Georgia, and Serbia. He has been with EWMI for eight years, and previously worked for the American Bar Association’s Central and East European Law Initiative, including serving as a country director in Romania in 1993 – 94. 

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Anthony Fisser, the project’s training expert, was the Team Leader for EWMI’s three prior projects in Romania leading the design and delivery of manuals, training sessions and conferences as well as conducting advanced trainer development sessions and making long-term planning recommendations to increase training schools capabilities.  He has 28 years of experience as Director of the Connecticut Center for Judicial Education and over the past ten years has consulted in many countries on all areas of training, the management of training institutions, and organizational development. He has additional experience in the field of continuing legal education for lawyers.  He is an attorney and was appointed a part-time magistrate for civil matters.



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Neal B. Kauder, President, VisualResearch, Inc. is internationally recognized for data analytics and information architecture for both print and electronic interfaces.  He conducts data and information presentation seminars for both government and private sector organizations.  He also conducts training in the areas of performance measurement and research methods.  He has served as a training consultant to BB&T Bank, Bonneville Power Authority, Education Testing Services (ETS), Commercial Litigation Branch of the U.S. Justice Department, USAID/EWMI Bosnia Judicial Reform Project, the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), and the National Centers for Disease Control.  Mr. Kauder has been involved with designing litigation and courtroom exhibits in a number of complex civil cases, most notably General Dynamics & McDonnell Douglas v. United States one of the largest government contract cases in American history–a $9 billion contract case involving the cancellation of the Navy’s A-12 stealth fighter contract. 

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Judge Roland Ketterle has over 20 years of experience as a judge and court manger. As a judge, he has worked on many issues ranging from criminal and civil law to construction and commercial law. He has worked for the Regional Court in Bonn as well as the Regional and Higher Regional Court in Cologne. As a court manager, Judge Ketterle has modernized and organized courts, headed human resource management, and trained other legal professionals. He has served as a law expert and has traveled to Pristina/Kosovo, Romania, and China. Recently, he has served as Vice President in the Regional Court in Bonn where he served as the Presiding Judge of the division of court competent. He is a graduate of Land North Rhine-Westphalia and the University of Bonn.​





Judge Narcis-Violin Stoica, President of Iaşi Tribunal, has an experience of 13 years as a judge, and he is currently working with the Criminal Section of this court. He is specialized in trying criminal cases involving minors, corruption, economic and financial crime, cybercrime and other types of cases. He attended numerous national and international training events, in various areas, including that of judicial management. He is a trainer of the National School of Court Clerks for several disciplines, and, at the same time, Vice-president of Iaşi Association of Magistrates. He has pre-academic and academic teaching experience, and also attended training courses in the area of teaching techniques. In the past, he collaborated with the National Institute of Magistracy, participating as a lecturer and/or preparing studies in/for the seminars on the topic „Public Policies in the Justice Area”. He participated as an expert in several projects, wrote draft  law proposals, contributed to the drafting of information or good practice guides, as well as of many articles, reviews or specialized studies. In the “Determining and Implementing the Optimal Volume of Work of Judges and Court Clerks and Ensuring the Quality of the Courts’ Activity” Project, he coordinated – at Iaşi Tribunal’s level – the implementation of activities by this pilot court.





Ken Stuart worked as a judge in the state courts in the United States for 25 years, and for 11 of those years served as the chief judge in a busy urban court.  In that capacity he was a leader in bringing mediation and alternative dispute resolution into the court system and in bringing computers into the courtroom.  For the past ten years he has worked in international projects focused on improving the judicial system in Eastern European countries, most notably in Bulgaria and Serbia before coming to Romania.  That work has involved extensive work improving courts through model court programs, improving court administration, and working with court financial systems.

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Judge Nicoleta Ţînţ has an experience of over 15 years as a judge, working with Braşov First Instance Court, Braşov Tribunal, and, starting from February 2006, with Braşov Court of Appeals. She has also teaching experience, being a trainer of the National School of Court Clerks – the Continuous Training Department since 2004. She also held management positions, being the Vice-president of Braşov Tribunal between 2002 and 2006. Since May 2012, she has been delegated in the position of Vice-president of Braşov Court of Appeals, being a member of this court’s team of during the implementation of the “Determining and Implementing the Optimal Volume of Work of Judges and Court Clerks and Ensuring the Quality of the Courts’ Activity” Project.



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Dr. Jesper Wittrup is the project’s team leader.  He has than 15 years of experience with administrative reforms, analysis and development of systems for performance management and resource allocation in the public sector, with a specialization in judicial reform processes. He served for five years as an executive advisor in the Danish Courts Administration (Danish Judicial Council), where he played a key role in planning and implementing strategic initiatives focusing on performance management. He has since 2004 advised governments and judicial councils in Eastern Europe with regard to reform and management of the judicial sector. In addition, he has in recent years focused on applying advanced benchmarking techniques, like Data Envelopment Analysis, to evaluate the performance and resource usage of public sector organizations. He is currently leading a government-financed program which aims to carry out state-of-the-art benchmarking for major public sector policy areas in Denmark.