Thank you to our outgoing and welcome to incoming leadership team
Bosnia & Herzegovina Futures Foundation is enormously thankful to all of our volunteers, mentors, donors, webinar speakers, podcast guests, ambassadors, student leaders, scholars and of course our board members. Tens of thousands of volunteering hours are put in by our big team to help us achieve our goals. With this in mind, we would like to take this moment to sincerely thank some individuals who have made enormous contributions to the leadership of the foundation and also welcome some new faces to our management board. As one of our key imperatives has always been “developing the leadership capacity of youth in Bosnia & Herzegovina”, the foundation’s management is carefully balanced between those with long term international and national experience, with those who are up and coming leaders in our homeland. With this approach, we are constantly keeping our finger on the pulse when it comes to truly understanding the challenges youth in Bosnia & Herzegovina face, as well as providing senior leadership to guide, educate and enable changemakers to thrive.
We thank the following individuals for their incredible contributions as they make way for new board members. This does not mean goodbye because, we are a big family and our departing board members will be involved in other projects and providing guidance.
Thank you to our outgoing board members
Dr. Damir Mitric (Board member since Jan 2019)
Based in Australia, Damir began volunteering with the foundation in early 2017 when together with founder Eddie Custovic, he helped organise and lead a large group of Australian students to Bosnia & Herzegovina. Since then he played important roles in educational pedagogy and assessment of scholars, helped chair the inaugural Vera Snajder Award Committee and provided very important input in scholar applications and interview processes. Damir will continue to be engaged with the foundation, helping establish and oversee more awards the foundation plans to launch in 2022 and beyond.
Tatjana Vucic (Board member since June 2018, Chair of the board Jan 2020-Dec 2021)
Tatjana joined the foundation as a volunteer and board member in the middle of 2018. Since then, she has played important roles in scholar leadership development through her mentoring and personalised coaching. In 2019 she was appointed chair of the foundation’s board where through her leadership a new dynamic to our scholar and process management was added. She contributed enormously to the foundation’s engagement with the IT industry in Bosnia & Herzegovina, helping facilitate numerous long-lasting relationships. From 2022 she will continue to provide input the foundation’s direction in an advisory role.
Haris Selmanovic (Board member since Jan 2019, Secretary since 2020)
Haris Selmanovic was one of the first volunteers of BH Futures Foundation and has been involved with our work since the middle of 2016. We met Haris as an eager 1st year student at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Tuzla and he has since then played an integral role in the foundation’s growth and engagement with students. He rose through our ranks and become the youngest board member at the mere age of 21. As of 2022, Haris will be working closely with our projects teams to enable further foundation growth and introduce project management techniques to our scholars.
Vernisa Rejhan (Board member since 2018)
Vernisa was one of the 5 founding board members of the foundation and has been volunteering with the foundation since mid 2017. Vernisa contributed enormously to the foundation with the Swedish mindset, people and process management. She introduced new processes into the foundation that helped set teams up for success. She played a big role in bringing the Donji Vakuf Makerspace and big advocacy in between Swedish-Bosnian professionals and companies. From 2022 she will continue to contribute in the Donji Vakuf Makerspace and strategically advice the foundation.
Vedrana Biberovic (Executive director since 2016) (Outgoing in 2022)
Vedrana played a very important role as a volunteer in the establishment of the foundation and the early years of our work. She supported the founders with administrative tasks and helped manage various resources until we were better equipped. For many years, she was the glue holding many aspects of the foundation together. She also made great contributions in organising foundation conferences from 2016 to 2019 and helped interview hundreds of future scholars.
Nihad Ferhatovic (Chair, Students & Young Professionals Leadership Committee)
Nihad joined BH Futures Foundation as a scholar and volunteer in January of 2018. Since then he has been an integral member of our scholar cohort and student leadership team. He has made enormous contributions is better understanding and managing student activities and under his leadership the SYPLC committee delivered dozens of important activities for the foundation. In 2021 Nihad will be joining a company in Bosnia & Herzegovina to work as an embedded engineer. He will remain an important member of our organisation and will advise incoming SYPLC members. We are deeply thankful to him for all of his hard work.
Welcome to our new board members
Sladjana Cosic (Social Development Specialist, European Investment Bank, Luxembourg)
Sladjana was educated at the University of Vienna and Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC. She is a senior social development specialist at the European Investment Bank. She has lived and worked in numerous countries all over the world and brings to the board immense experience and leadership in social & financial sustainability sustainable finance, environmental and social governance, responsive social due diligence, stakeholder engagement, and community-driven development.
Zinka Bejtic (Professor, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates)
Zinka Bejtic is a professor with more than 20 years of teaching experience in higher education institutions in Canada, the United States, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the United Arab Emirates. Zinka brings to the foundation board very broad leadership capacity, expertise in cognitive pedagogy of experiential education, focusing on the social-emotional aspect of teaching and learning. Most of all, Zinka is passionate about helping young people in Bosnia & Herzegovina unleash their full potential.
Momcilo Amovic (Software Engineer, LANACO, Banja Luka, Bosnia & Herzegovina)
Momcilo Amovic attained his computer science bachelor and masters degrees from University of East Sarajevo. He has been a volunteer with the foundation since January of 2018 and has held various leadership roles at the student and graduate level. He is a highly talented, disciplined and well organised engineering professional whose talent has been recognised by his employers and the community. He brings to the board rich understanding of the challenges faced by students & young professionals in Bosnia & Herzegovina as well as outstanding leadership in the planning and execution of on the ground initiatives.
Haris Arnautovic (Project Manager, Bicom Systems, Tuzla, Bosnia & Herzegovina)
Haris Arnautovic young professional passionate about operations and project management with strong focus on lean and agile methodologies. He has helped numerous organisations with scaling and diversifying existing processes, as well as designing and launching new initiatives. He is currently a project manager with Bicom Systems. He has been a volunteer of the foundation since 2018 and his leadership and operational excellence has exponentially grown over the last few years.
Meet our staff
As foundation is run vastly by hundreds of volunteers and that is what makes our work so rewarding. However, some core operations of the foundation are handled by paid staff who truly believe in our cause. They ensure that we are operational compliant and that we deliver on our promises to students we are empowering through our work. They support the development of our scholars, overseeing and managing day to day operations and support our volunteers. Without them, we would not be able to do what we do.
Majda Mujanovic Babovic (Executive Director, Tuzla, Bosnia & Herzegovina) (Incoming 2022)
Majda joined the foundation as the first ever paid staff member in order to help us scale our mentorship program in 2019. Her highly professional attitude, passion and love for the work she was undertaking resonated with all of our board members and volunteers, so we decided to make sure she stayed with us. After two years of managing our mentorship program and overall scholar program, Majda will officially become the new executive director. She brings with her a wealth of experience in the not for profit sector and we know she will help us grow further.
Melvisa Miskic (Scholar Program Manager, Velika Kladusa & Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina)
Melvisa joined the foundation in July 2021 to support the scholar program growth. Her professional background in psychology and significant experience in youth work are matchless in providing the right personal and professional support for our scholars. She brings with her a down-to-earth, heart-warming attitude and open-mindedness as a great role-model to scholars and other volunteers in the foundation. Finally, she demonstrated her true commitment and passion for what the foundation is doing when she took a full-time position as Scholar Program Manager in September 2021. We are more than confident she will help us further develop our scholar program.
