Meet The Team

Chair of the Board

Jelena Todorović-Bojović

Jelena is a PhD student at LMU specializing in public economics, corporate taxation, and family economics. She serves on the board of WiE, focusing on the events team, and hosts the WiE Podcast. In her free time, she loves traveling, volunteering, reading, learning languages, baking, and practicing pilates.

Vice Chair of the Board

Sandra Kretschmer

Sandra, WiE’s Board Member for Outreach, joined in early 2020 after serving as event coordinator and Head of Research. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, focusing on decentralization incentives for energy transition. Currently, she works as an Energy Market Analyst at Siemens Energy.

Head of Finance

Maria Hofbauer Pèrez

Maria is a PhD candidate in economics at LMU Munich, focusing on empirical research in inequality and health. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, cross-country skiing, yoga, and attending concerts and theatre events.

Board Member

Clara Schäper

Clara is a Doctoral Researcher in the Gender Economics Research Group at DIW Berlin and a PhD candidate at the Berlin School of Economics. She lectures at the University of Potsdam and is a guest researcher at the Federal Institute for Population Research. Her research focuses on labor economics, gender, and family economics, while she enjoys live music and global cuisine in her free time.

Board Member

Virginia Sondergeld

Virginia leads WiE’s strategic development and monitors its impact. As a PhD candidate at the Berlin School of Economics and DIW Berlin since 2019, she researches labor and gender economics. In her free time, she enjoys electronic music, playing piano, judo, and running.

Board Member

Antonia Kurz

Antonia is a board member and the HR Coordinator at WiE, supporting the other teams through the advertisement, recruitment, and onboarding of new volunteers. She is maintaining oversight of, and contact with, our growing pool of now more than 70 team members. Outside of WiE, Antonia is a Postdoc at DIW Berlin and holds a PhD from TI/VU Amsterdam. Her research is at the intersection of Environmental Economics and Trade. She spends her free time mostly on one of her bikes, counting laps in the pool, learning how to play tennis, or creating new dishes in the kitchen.

Board Member

Ella Needler

Ella is in her PhD at the University of Groningen exploring the evolution of financial theory. Her academic interests include topics of fundamental uncertainty, central banking, and gender through the subfields of the history and methodology of economics, macro, and finance. She holds a bachelors in economics and finance from Washington University in St. Louis and a Research Masters in Economics and Philosophy from Erasmus University Rotterdam. Ella has worked across macro, finance, and central banking with internship experience at the St. Louis Fed and professional experience at Ortec Finance.