Our Team


Marischa Weiser
Team lead
Training design & Partnerships
Marischa enjoys human-centered working where meaningful and trustful relationships build the foundation. She is keen on supporting teams and organizations to build fruitful, healthy and resilient structures and processes, and facilitating participation and collaboration to create collective impact. She is a social entrepreneur, team lead and facilitator with a background in the field of culture and citizenship education. At horizontal school, she is responsible for its strategic development; strives towards building an inclusive, horizontal and appreciative working culture in the team; establishes partnerships with organizations and conceptualizes and facilitates trainings with our trainers who are an essential source for her inspiration and learning.
MAXIm SMEKHOV
Program Manager
Maxim truly believes in the power of human connection and thinks that we have only scratched the surface of its potential. Maxim’s likes playing a range of roles, including facilitation, storytelling, management, and writing. As our program manager, Maxim will be bringing his experience in capacity development process, learning design and entrepreneurial thinking to support us making next strategic moves and to co-create educational projects and products such as Erasmus Projects, Civil Society Toolbox and others.




ELA TEKGÜL
Communication and Event Management
Ela’s interest in non-formal education and cultural exchange brought her to horizontal school as a volunteer in the frame of European Solidarity Corps. After completing her bachelor’s degree in architecture, she was introduced to the NGO world through youth exchanges, training courses and volunteering projects. With her experience of working in different NGOs in Turkey and Italy, she is supporting horizontal school in communication and PR, administration and event management.
Malwina Fendrych
Sparring Partner




Shaivi naulakha
Social Media Management
Her interest in social media, digital marketing and creative thinking led Shaivi to MitOst as a student- where she loves creating content for social media. She is currently working on strategizing marketing plans to enable growth and build new connections between people and organizations. She is a travel and fitness enthusiast.