Pietro De Matteis is an advisor on public diplomacy at the European External Action Service and works on developing new approaches to build trust and mutual understanding with citizens worldwide. Before, he worked for the European Commission managing cooperation programmes for Asia and North America as well as in the field of regional policy and city-to-city cooperation. He also worked for the Chamber of Commerce of Milan, a Multinational Company in Shanghai, the European Central Bank and the EU Institute for Security Studies. Pietro graduated from the University of Milan-Bicocca after an Erasmus year in Paris obtained a Master’s degree from the European College of Parma. Awarded by various scholarships he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University (NY) and at Renmin University (Beijing). He holds a PhD form the University of Cambridge and has run as candidate for the European Parliament in the 2014 elections. Pietro was elected as a city councillor in Brussels (Saint Gilles) and is the initiator of a new startup "PowerCrowd.eu"