Expert Spotlight | Marie-Thérèse Schreiber, Associate, Process Designer and Facilitator

APROPOS team

Marie-Thérèse is passionate about designing collaborative processes and dialogue spaces that drive meaningful change. As an Associate Process Designer and Facilitator at APROPOS - Advancing Process in Politics and a Program & Grants Manager at the Open European Dialogue, she works towards public sector innovation as well as better dialogue and collaboration in the political sphere.

In 2024, she co-facilitated the second edition of the OED Policy Design Sprint, a seven-week online program where policymakers and experts come together to tackle complex challenges and develop a forward-thinking policy prototype. In 2025, she is part of a team that supports the German Development Agency‘s (GIZ) Global Programme Shaping Development-Oriented Migration by co-designing a series of workshops that empower civil society actors, in addition to her work at the OED.

Trained in Design Thinking at the renowned Hasso Plattner Institute’s d-school, she sees this methodology as as a powerful tool not only for achieving innovative outcomes in the private sector but for strengthening democratic deliberation, fostering civic engagement, and ensuring evidence-based policymaking. She is always looking for ways to apply this mindset and skills to make collaboration in the social and political sphere more effective, inclusive, and impactful.

Before joining APROPOS, Marie-Thérèse gained valuable experience across a wide range of organizations, including the German Council on Foreign Relations, the Institut für Europäische Politik, the Freie Universität Berlin in cooperation with the German Federal Foreign Office, the General Secretariat of the United Nations, the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine and German public administration. Across these roles, her focus has often been on democracy promotion, human rights, the rule of law and good governance - issues she remains deeply committed to.

During her master’s studies at the European University Viadrina, she explored social and political transformation processes in the post-soviet space, culminating in a thesis on the resilience of Ukrainian civil society actors during the Russian Federation‘s full-scale invasion in 2022.

This research made her curious about the interconnection of resilience, transformation and innovation practices. Her latest thinking is that societal resilience - and potentially, the transformative changes needed to achieve it - can be significantly strengthened through well-designed, responsive, inclusive, collaborative processes that harvest the knowledge and perspectives of a variety of social actors. By embracing participatory methodologies that extend beyond traditional representative democracy, societies can foster deeper engagement, collective problem-solving, and therefore more sustainable whole-of-society solutions.

Get in touch if you would like to find out more – or to collaborate on areas of shared interest!

Contact

marie-therese[at]aproposgroup.org