Olivia Vereha

Olivia began her professional life as a journalist and has worked for many of the major publications in Romania. Starting 2012 she has become an UX designer and all of her research and documentation skills, together with an enormous curiosity have been used to understand social issues and to figure out what is the best way to address them through technology. After several years spent as a consultant for both start-ups and tech companies, she has joined the Code for Romania team as a full time member of the crew and has since led the research & design programme of the organisation.

Currently, in her role as vice-president of Product at Commit Global she ensures that the solutions we maintain, co-create and deploy are always in line with the context and specifics of each space they reach, that all of the tech made available globally is up to standards and that every single implementation we do is being put to good use at its maximum potential. One of Olivia’s biggest objectives is to make sure that no organisation is left out, that the technology we provide understands civil society properly and responds timely and adequately to every relevant request.

While pursuing her doctorate on digital public services at the Babes-Bolyai University, Olivia is also teaching a course on Citizen Experience Design addressing topics such as open-source in public administration and civil society, sustainable digital transformation in public service and user experience design for social good at the University of Bucharest. Her hope is to train new generations of specialists in designing suitable systems, apps, services and processes that revolve around real needs and address critical pain points, making sure no user is left behind, especially if that user is part of any vulnerable population.