Elizabeth is based in Malawi, where she runs an environmental and social consulting firm. During the fellowship she researched the barriers and bottlenecks to funding in EU tobacco control — a cause with a strong evidence base and experienced advocates, yet one where funding has failed to keep pace. Her work examined why a problem responsible for 700,000 European deaths a year stays chronically under-resourced, and what it would take to close the gap. She completed the fellowship remotely from Lilongwe.

At Smokefree Partnership, a Brussels-based tobacco control NGO, Henry worked on translating research into policy impact at the European level, turning data into tools that help advocates and policymakers make the case for stronger tobacco laws across Europe. Earlier, as a D66 party member, he helped push ten tobacco control amendments through a party congress — one of which later landed in the Dutch coalition agreement.

Jeltsje exposed tobacco industry manipulation in EU public consultations, generating press coverage that created new openings for dialogue with the European Commission. She coordinated cancer organisations across borders into a joint campaign tackling tobacco shopping, producing an opinion piece and co-signed policy brief. She mapped country positions in the EU tobacco taxation debate and charted the regulatory landscape for tobacco and nicotine within UN treaty frameworks.

Laura brings over two decades of experience in tobacco control. She co-founded Unfairtobacco in 2004, exposing child labour and human rights abuses in tobacco supply chains, and has since built coalitions at national and international levels. A leading German expert on the tobacco lobby, she has represented civil society at UN tobacco treaty negotiations and spent five years at the German Cancer Research Center. During her fellowship, Laura laid the groundwork for a dedicated tobacco industry watchdog in Germany.

Peter came to the fellowship from strategic communications, start-ups and corporate strategy, and was placed at the European Respiratory Society in Brussels. His hypothesis: good evidence routinely fails to reach the people positioned to act on it. So he applied communications thinking and rapid prototyping to tobacco control — producing a myth-busting website used by advocates at COP11, an AI tool that speeds up policy-amendment analysis, and an index tracking nicotine policy across 37 European countries. He's now building that infrastructure for civil society at scale.

During his fellowship, Wouter explored what role insurers can play in a tobacco-free future. Embedded inside Achmea, he spoke with colleagues across health insurance, asset management and sustainability to understand what drives engagement — or silence — on tobacco. As an outsider on the inside, he opened conversations that insiders rarely start. His results: a map of how a major Dutch insurer thinks about tobacco across business units, a high-level internal roundtable on insurers in a tobacco-free future, and board-level discussions on Achmea's future engagement.

During his fellowship, Jasper examined how the EU can reduce its heavy reliance on imported soy and build a more resilient food system. Using a quantitative model, he assessed multiple protein diversification strategies across four policy scenarios, weighing their economic, social and environmental impacts. The results showed that spreading effort across strategies, rather than betting on a single solution, consistently produced the best outcomes — informing recommendations to the European Commission on strengthening EU food security.

Kiri joined the European Environmental Bureau with a background in economics and sustainability consulting. During the fellowship, her work quantified the links between the environmental damage of the EU's current protein system and the EU's ability to stay strategically autonomous. Alongside her main policy position on this, she:

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• Networked and advocated at the EU Parliament, EU Commission, think tanks and NGOs
• Wrote and presented an internal brief on novel protein sources
• Supported EEB's engagement with the Food Policy Coalition on public procurement

Placed at the European Policy Centre (EPC) in Brussels, Laura worked on financial incentives for farmers to produce a wider variety of European protein sources.

During her fellowship, Laura:

• Hosted a roundtable with policymakers and key stakeholders on empowering EU farmers
• Developed a set of key EU-level financial policy recommendations
• Supported EPC’s sustainable agrifood engagement in the EU policymaking network

Mirnesa joined the Food Transition Fellowship with a background in strategy consulting. Her work focuses on building healthier food environments - because making better options more accessible to consumers is key to enabling lasting dietary change.

During her fellowship, she:

• Worked to build consensus among NGOs on ultra-processed foods, helping to depolarize the debate and develop shared policy recommendations
• Created a framework enabling NGOs to collectively prioritize policy efforts and speak with a stronger voice
• Advocated for food policies that benefit both people and the planet

Niklas worked with EuroCommerce — the main European body for retail and wholesale — in Brussels, analysing the sector's role in protein diversification. During his fellowship, he:

• Worked with retailers across Europe to map their engagement and share what works
• Organised a European Parliament event for value-chain players to discuss cooperation
• Built a knowledge base on why diversification matters for grocery retail and how the sector can drive demand for alternative proteins
  He is now finalising a report on the opportunities and challenges for the retail sector.

Olga joined the fellowship after a decade of working across FMCG, tech and consulting. During her time at IEEP, she was researching the issues with the way the supply chain is currently set up, and how those barriers limit the legume production. Her work focuses on how different forms of collaboration and cooperative building are necessary - putting in place policies and systems encouraging farmers to venture into legume cultivation.

During her fellowship, Rachel focused on the opportunities and gaps in supporting protein-crop cultivation at farm level. She mapped EU Member State policies and synthesised insights from CAP Strategic Plans and National Protein Strategies to examine how existing approaches help or hinder diversification — work intended to inform an EU Protein Strategy and Action Plan. Her report also offers a practical "how to build a good protein strategy" checklist. With fellow Peter Halliwell, she launched From the Field, a platform sharing fellows' stories and work.

At GFI Europe, Steph set out to map why the EU food system is so resistant to change — not just slow to adapt, but structurally organised to reproduce itself. Using causal-loop mapping (built in Kumu), she traced feedback dynamics across six interconnected subsystems, from farm-level infrastructure costs to corporate capture of EU policy, identifying the loops that keep the system stable and the points where targeted intervention could have outsized effect. Her report, Why Is This So Hard? Mapping the Architecture of Food System Persistence, is not publicly available.

Thomas joined the fellowship from the Austrian government, where he worked on animal welfare, food labelling and dietary change. Placed at the European Alliance for Plant-based Foods and the Vegetarian Society of Denmark, he:

• Pushed for EU plant-based action plans by managing the "Partners for Plant-Based" industry call and engaging policymakers in the Commission and Parliament
• Promoted the Danish plant-based action plan and helped advance it in other member states
• Coordinated the coalition opposing unfair restrictions on plant-based product names

Tim joined the fellowship from a background in neurotech entrepreneurship and research. Placed at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels, he worked on how EU regulation can accelerate the shift to sustainable protein. During and after his fellowship, he:

• Strengthened the economic case for protein diversification at EU level
• Made the case at CEPS IdeasLab, Brussels' invite-only policy conference
• Began co-organising a workshop on the EU protein strategy with senior policymakers
  His work targets the rules that decide what gets grown, subsidised and eaten across Europe.