President
Mensur Haliti
Mensur Haliti is President of the Roma for Democracy Foundation. He leads its institutional strategy in pursuit of RFD’s mission: to build the political voice and power of Roma across Europe — and through it, a European democracy that works for everyone.
Over two decades, he has worked across international organisations, philanthropy, public institutions, and political movements. Until 2024, he led political leadership and institutional development at the Open Society Roma Initiatives.
He is Vice President for Democracy and Network Development at the Roma Foundation for Europe, Chair of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture, and a member of the Aspen Institute, the Leading Change Network, and the Leadership and Peacemaking Global Network. Haliti holds an Executive Master of Public Administration from the Hertie School, with executive education at Harvard Kennedy School, MIT Sloan School of Management, and Saïd Business School, Oxford. His doctoral research examines Romanipe as a framework of governance, exploring how a political order sustained authority and organisation across centuries without a territorial monopoly.
His work focuses on the relationship between democratic legitimacy, political representation, and institutional resilience. He argues that the absence of durable political arrangements between European democracies and around 11.3 million Roma reveals broader weaknesses in democratic systems themselves. Amid growing political fragmentation and declining public trust, he builds the leadership, institutions, and representation needed to renew democratic legitimacy and shape Europe's future.