Our first keynote speaker is Yordan Yordanov. He is an assistant professor at the Department of Plant Science, Agricultural University, Plovdiv.

Apart from being responsible for the Agroecology Centre, which is the testing ground for Organic Agriculture at the Agrarian University, Jordan has over 20 years of experience in organic farming, with many ideas and expertise from developing even his own herb farm. There is hardly anyone more knowledgeable about the wealth of herbs in the Rhodopes and using herbs in a sustainable way. This will be the topic that Jordan will present at our conference. For the past three years he has been lecturing on organic farming to the National Agriculture Advisory Service, which supports start-up farmers in Bulgaria.

Jordan is also the main driver behind the website www.flora.bg .

 Hristina Vassileva is an experienced economist with over 25 years of experience in financial management and project management, proven mentor to young entrepreneurs. Hristina is the President of Cluster Varna Business Consult – an association working to support entrepreneurship, including women’s and social entrepreneurship.

With successfully implemented projects “Me, Entrepreneur?”, which has trained 80 young entrepreneurs and 21 have launched their own companies, as well as “Business on High Heels” to support women entrepreneurs, Hristina will present the main results of the research and evaluation of existing policies to support entrepreneurs in the Greek-Bulgarian cross-border region.