Jennifer McGuinn is an experienced policy analyst, team leader and project manager. She joined Milieu in 2010 and is responsible for strategic management and leadership of Milieu’s policy analysis work. She has degrees in History and International Economics, and has worked in many parts of Europe, including Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans, providing her with a comprehensive Europe-wide perspective on EU policies. Jennifer is a highly skilled team leader and project manager, with outstanding problem-solving and mentoring skills, and the capacity to motivate colleagues and experts to do their best work.

Jennifer has managed many policy evaluation projects for EU clients, including the European Commission and the Parliament, as well as NGOs and international organisations. She is experienced in carrying out regulatory impact assessments and evaluations of EU legislation and programmatic interventions, as well as the preparation of studies to support the evaluations and Fitness Checks within the context of the Commission’s Regulatory Fitness and Performance programme (REFIT). She is well-acquainted with the methodological approaches and tools promoted by the European Commission for this work, as well as the precise political context in which these evaluations are carried out. She also regularly contributes to guidance documents, toolkits and capacity-building initiatives aimed at policy-makers and stakeholders across the EU.

Jennifer’s main areas of expertise are environmental policy, EU funds and the interaction between environment and socio-economic development. She has led project teams and co-authored many studies on environmental assessment; Cohesion Policy and the environment; nature, biodiversity and green infrastructure; water and waste management; and climate change. In recent years she led several initiatives contributing to the implementation and dissemination of the EU strategy on adaptation to climate change, with a focus on governance and capacity-building. She also works regularly on measures to improve planning and permitting procedures for large infrastructure projects in the transport and energy sectors.

Jennifer started her career in Central and Eastern Europe, supporting governments to set up public investment funds to support investments in municipal environmental infrastructure and provide co-financing for donor funded initiatives. She later joined the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC), where she was primarily responsible for the organisation’s work with local and regional authorities and on financing for environmental infrastructure. She developed the center’s practice area dedicated to assisting the new EU Member States to better integrate environmental concerns into Structural and Cohesion Funds, including coordinating their participation in the EU’s network of environmental authorities. She has also served as an independent advisor to INTERREG projects supporting local and regional authorities to integrate sustainability within public investment programmes.