Team

John Furnari is an experienced justice, rule of law, anti-corruption, and human rights development manager with 20 years of field experience delivering technical assistance and training to promote public accountability and civil society engagement, with specialized expertise throughout the Balkans. Most recently, he served as Chief of Party on the USAID-funded Kosovo Legal Profession Program, where he strengthened disciplinary processes within the Kosovo Bar Association, facilitated the development of practitioner-based law clinics, and improved access to the legal profession for non-majority lawyers and law students. Prior to Kosovo’s independence, John led NCSC’s USAID-funded support to build Kosovo’s justice oversight system (inspection, audit, performance). In addition to his work with Kosovo’s justice sector, he has managed a range of transitional justice and human rights efforts in post-conflict Bosnia. Initially his efforts focused on judicial accountability, transparency and integrity with ABA/ROLI (1998-99), UN (2000-02). But upon his return to BiH in 2007, his efforts focused on strengthening the State of BiH by supporting State-led efforts to address grievances and unresolved ethnic divisions via UNDP's Transitional Justice Program (2007-09), and to legally secure BiH State property via OHR's State Property Program (2009-10). Prior to his return to Kosovo in 2014, John led World Bank assistance to develop Serbia's Free Legal Aid Legislation and to implement its new Criminal Procedure Code (2011-2014). Mr. Furnari is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame (BA 1988) and holds a J.D. from John Marshall Law School (1993), and an LLM from Pace University School of Law (1997). Beyond the Balkan region, John has provided advisory services related to Rule of Law efforts in Haiti, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Palestine, Iraq, and the Marianas Islands.

Ms. Ahmetaj is a Civil Society/Access to Justice Specialist with more than 5 years of experience working on legal reform in Kosovo. Currently she is engaged as Legal Program officer at Demand for Justice Program and legal consultant in different local CSO's. From 2013-2016, Ms. Ahmetaj worked for the Youth Initiative for Human Rights on monitoring and strategic litigation including serving as the organization’s Executive Director in 2015 and 2016. Previously, she worked on two USAID-funded programs as a legal research intern. She is a LLM candidate in International Law at the University of Pristina.

Fidan has graduated from the University of Prishtina Faculty of Economics, Management and Informatics field. Now he is doing his master studies in the field of Economics at University of Prishtina. Fidan has more than seven years of experience in financial, office and project management. He also attended various financial management, reporting and accounting trainings. Despite the field that he is specializing in, he also attended various extracurricular student activities, training and conferences, including his representation of the University of Prishtina in the Harvard National Model United Nations, student’s conference at the Harvard University.

Valentina Zeka is a student at the University of Prishtina, pursuing a degree in legal studies. Valentina previously held multiple internships such as at PILPG as part of the “Justice and the People” Campaign, at the Ministry of Justice - Department for European Integration and Policy Coordination with the OSCE project “Empowering youth involvement and public participation in decision-making” and at the Court of Appeals. Valentina also participated in various trainings and competitions including The Demand for Justice Program Criminal Law Clinic, OSCE Dialogue Academy for Young Women, Philip C. Jessup Moot Court Competition, and Hamburg Model United Nations.