GÉANT is delighted to announce the following two staff appointments with immediate effect:
- Nicole Harris has been promoted to the new role of Head of Security (Products and Services)
- Mira Stanic has been promoted to the role of Community Programme Manager (taking over from Dawn Hsu-hua Ng, who continues with GÉANT as Head of Transformation)
These changes follow the announcement of the GÉANT Association’s 2026-2030 Strategy earlier this year at TNC26 and are aimed at further strengthening the organisation’s leadership team in vital areas and supporting the implementation of the strategy in the coming years.
Nicole Harris, Head of Security (Products and Services)
Nicole has worked in the NREN community since leaving university, first in a project role at the London School of Economics, followed by 10 years working in trust and identity for UK NREN Jisc. During that time, she established the UK Access Management Federation as one of the first identity federations for research and education and set up a focus on open-source development and advocacy for the UK research and education community.
She moved to GÉANT in 2013 and had her first experiences in the security field when she took over coordination of the TF-CSIRT community and the Trusted Certificate Service. Nicole became a trainer for the successful TRANSITS training programme for CSIRTS, has been a core part of the development of a human-focused training and awareness security programme for GÉANT’s internal staff, and forms part of the ISO27001 project team.
“Now is a great opportunity to be moving into the role of Head of Security (Products and Services) as the R&E community is ready to take its next steps in maturing this portfolio. Since security was first introduced as a standalone work package in the GÉANT project just over six years ago, we’ve made significant improvements in the ways in which we collaborate on security. The new challenge is to evolve a mature security products and services offer for our members and the wider security community, and all the building blocks are in place. I particularly look forward to using my experiences in the CSIRT community, crisis management and as a lead trainer to start shaping out our next steps.”
Mira Stanic, GÉANT Community Programme Manager
Mira joined GÉANT in 2024 as Senior Partner Relations Manager, working closely with European NRENs and focusing on connecting Association members with services and technology. Before joining GÉANT, Mira worked for the Dutch Research Council-funded Thematic Digital Competence Centre for Natural & Engineering Sciences at TU Delft, managing a funding programme and helping grow a national community around FAIR data, sustainable research software, and open science practices. Mira first worked at the Croatian NREN CARNET, a great introduction to the GÉANT community.
“The GÉANT Community Programme already brings together a remarkable range of people and expertise, and I’m excited to help that energy go further. I’d like to bring innovation and community even closer together, drawing on my experience designing community participation models and funding instruments. I’m passionate about building the structures that help communities thrive, and so I’m really looking forward to opening more doors to our neighbouring communities and showing the impact we can make together.”
(Mira’s success in her past role and her new promotion leaves a gap in the important Partner Relations function which the team will of course cover in the interim. Applications are therefore welcome for the role of Senior Partner Relations Manager.)
Congratulations to both Nicole and Mira, and we wish them well in their new roles!
