Leire Orue-Echevarria is a Policy Officer in the unit of Cloud and Software of DG CONNECT, currently acting as Simpl-Open Project Owner.

She has more than 25 years of working experience in the software industry. Prior to joining the European Commission, she managed and participated in many projects devoted to the development and testing of commercial software products for various industries and the public administration. She also has extensive experience in research and innovation activities acquired through the coordination of large collaborative research projects especially in the areas of software engineering, open source, multi-cloud, cybersecurity and public sector. She holds a master's degree in computer engineering and a PhD in Economics.

Justine is known as a bridge builder and as a listener. In the past she worked for a local government, the city of Ghent, on local and EU-funded smart city projects. She currently works for Flanders Digital Agency as an ecosystem manager for Smart Data on OSLO-standards and LDES-standards. There she works on a community of public and private stakeholders and focuses on interoperability between and for different organisations, systems and across domains. In her role she contributes to the development of data spaces in Flanders and beyond.

Alessandro Paciaroni is a research associate at the Lisbon Council where he leads activities of research and advocacy on digital transformation, public sector innovation and data across various projects. He previously contributed to lay down the groundwork for the development of a digital infrastructure for a circular economy at TEXRoad and assisted the research on AI policy at the Future of Life Institute. He holds a master's degree in public sector innovation and e-governance from KU Leuven, the University of Münster and the Tallinn University of Technology.