Liza Gashi

Liza was born to an Albanian family from Gjilan in 1990. In 2006, at the age of 16 she left Kosova to attend high school at UWC Costa Rica.[4] In 2009, she got a full scholarship to attend Wartburg College where she majored in International Relations, Spanish, and Political Sciences.[5] In 2012, she participated in a semester abroad at National University of Cordoba, taking classes in Spanish literature, Latin American history and Politics.[6][7] In 2014 she was selected as the first cohort recipient of the USAID Kosovo scholarship Transformational Leadership Program, and attended Arizona State University, from which she attained a Masters in Public Administration in 2016.[8][9][10]

In 2008, inspired by the benefits of studying abroad, she established and led the national committee of UWC Kosova, an education movement that helped place talented and youth leaders of Kosovo into world leading education institutions that are part of the United World Colleges network.[5][2] In 2011, together with other members of Albanian diaspora in the United States, she founded and served as executive director of GERMIN, a leading regional nonprofit specializing in engaging diaspora communities in advancing the development and democratization of their home countries in Western Balkans, through shaping the public discourse on diaspora matters and has advocated on the advancement of the country's policies, legislation and institutional approaches on diaspora engagement.[11] She also established KosovoDiaspora.org, a crowdsourcing digital engagement and diplomacy platform that has promoted Kosovo's statehood internationally. She has policy and research experience in international development, innovation, public diplomacy, migration and diaspora matters engaging multiple stakeholders. She led many associations, organizations and project on diaspora engagement. She is fluent in English, Albanian and Spanish.[1] She is a Junior Fellow of European Stability Initiative.[12][6] In 2022, she was named one of the European Young Leaders by Friends of Europe.[13]

In April 2020, she was appointed as an incumbent Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora by the Prime Minister of Kosova as a member of civil society with no political affiliations, because of her contributions to advancing the cause of diaspora within the Kosova discourse.[14] In June 2021, she was reappointed as Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, for the second term of the Kurti government.[15]