"Where Dialogue Becomes Policy"
America & Europe in the World
Goldman School of Public Policy, UC Berkeley
BRIDGING BEYOND is a student-led policy taskforce at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. We bring together students, faculty, and practitioners from the United States and Europe to analyze, debate, and co-create policy responses to the challenges that define our shared future — with democracy and liberal values at the center.
Many of the conversations happening at Berkeley resonate deeply in Europe, and many happening across Europe deserve more attention here. BRIDGING BEYOND exists to bring those conversations together, consistently and structurally, rather than leaving them to chance encounters.
Open to all GSPP students (MPP, MPA, MDP, PhD) interested in US-Europe policy, international affairs, and comparative governance. No prior experience required — just curiosity and a willingness to engage across borders.
Modern bureaucracies face a crisis of purpose, not just capacity. There is no longer a working consensus on how to define the common good that public institutions are meant to serve — and waiting for that consensus to renew itself globally is not an effective strategy. In the meantime, welfare states risk becoming a footnote in history, and liberal democracy risks becoming the least preferred option on the menu.
BRIDGING BEYOND begins with an inquiry: what brings us together, and what should we bring beyond our borders and into the world? From that question grows a taskforce — and from the taskforce, something with a larger aim. A permanent platform connecting the Bay and Europe through sustained dialogue, shared experience, community, and institutional programs built to last.
With practitioners and policymakers from the US and Europe, across our focus areas.
Co-producing policy frameworks with US & European voices at GSPP.
Berkeley ↔ institutions, think tanks & civil society across continents.
Actionable policy briefs that feed into real decisions wherever they matter.
We believe in the power of critical thinking to sustain the intellectual foundation on which democracy stands.
Early thinking and working notes. Not final answers — starting points for dialogue.
How artificial intelligence is reshaping public administration, regulation, and democratic accountability — and the opportunities it opens for public management and governance systems if, through genuine dialogue, we can move past skepticism and toward frameworks that actually work.
Across the US and Europe, governments are running AI pilots without the institutional frameworks to govern them once they scale. The real question isn't whether to adopt AI in government, but how to build oversight, accountability, and public trust structures that travel with it.
Shared challenges that demand shared solutions — comparing approaches and co-developing policy responses across America and Europe.
Spain, much of Europe, and increasingly the US face the same pressure: aging populations and shrinking active workforces straining pay-as-you-go pension systems. The political responses vary widely — and each carries lessons for the others.
Across America and Europe, there is a silent epidemic of burnout and emotional distress affecting all age groups — but hitting young people and adolescents hardest. What social and labor structures can we build to alleviate suffering in today's world — and how can policy, not just therapy, lead the way?
Violence against women and girls remains the most prevalent form of violence in the world. What new approaches are America and Europe willing to adopt? Dialogue is necessary to overcome the conformism that economic comfort in Western societies has bred.
Will we allow environmental protection policies to stagnate? Protecting the environment need not mean reducing the social and economic outputs of our societies. The current discourse is stuck on catastrophe, leaving a generation of young people disengaged from their natural surroundings. We need a new conversation.
A generation of democrats has grown up unfamiliar with armed conflict as a present option. Understanding what war is, the forms it takes today, and how democratic states can work to prevent it requires the kind of open, rigorous dialogue that is disappearing from public discourse.
Also on our agenda: Welfare State, Childhood & Youth, Labor Market, and Public Administration Reform.
Student-led course, Fall 2026
With Mario Santamaría and Alex Saum, ICA San José.
Spanish Flag Raising Ceremony, at the invitation of the Office of Mayor Daniel Lurie.
BRIDGING BEYOND joins the network's open days.
As a graduate fellow of the Institute of International Studies.
Former Government Chief Data Officer of Estonia, now with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change — bringing a leading voice on digital government and data-driven public policy.
Government advisor on technology and Lead Author of The Agentic State. Founding Managing Director of the Global Government Technology Centre (WEF, Berlin). Former founder of GovMind, sold in 2024. MPhil in Public Policy, University of Cambridge.
Global advisor, tech entrepreneur, and former Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. Co-creator of the Diia ecosystem. Yale Peace Fellow 2025 and Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council.
Everything we've done since launch, newest first — dialogues, partnerships, and the community we're building between the Bay, Spain and Europe. Open a month to see its activities.
First session of our student-led course at the Goldman School (PP 297), on the idea of Europe.
Milestone Academic partnershipA planning call on a tech policy trip to Berkeley, joined by Manuel Kilian, Valeriya Ionan and colleagues. It led to the Spring 2027 Tech Policy Dialogues in the Bay Area, developed as a graduate fellow of the IIS.
Academic partnership Policy dialogueCollaboration as a graduate fellow of the IIS, including a Capstone project proposal.
Academic partnershipOnline session on the European Union Delegation's call for proposals.
Institutional partnershipA celebration of European culture in Golden Gate Park, organized by the European Union Delegation.
Community engagementIntroducing BRIDGING BEYOND to the new Goldman School cohort.
Community engagementHosted by CITRIS and the Banatao Institute at Sutardja Dai Hall — a starting point for collaborating with the series.
Academic partnershipA conversation at the UC Berkeley Faculty Club with Ambassador Jovita Neliupšienė, Ambassador of the European Union to the United States; Dr. Akasemi Newsome, Co-Director of the Institute of European Studies; and Prof. Michaela Mattes, moderated by Prof. Daniel J. Sargent. Organized by the EU Office in San Francisco with the Institute of International Studies, the Institute of European Studies and the Goldman School; proposed and coordinated by BRIDGING BEYOND. Each question was anchored in a book from the EU Ambassadors Book Collection.
Institutional partnership MilestoneFormer Chief Data Officer of the Estonian Government, on digital government and data policy.
Policy dialogueOur page is now live on the Goldman School website.
MilestoneCampus meetings with the Tech Policy Officer of the Consulate of the Netherlands and an officer of the Consulate of the Czech Republic, and a call with a policy advisor in Brussels.
Institutional partnershipGathering organized by the Spanish Consulate in San Francisco to watch Spain win the 2026 World Cup.
Community engagementConversations with Beth Simone Noveck, Director of The GovLab and the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University, and Juliet B. Schor, Professor of Sociology at Boston College.
Academic partnershipMarching with the European Union and Spanish contingent.
Community engagementValencian delegation event at Plug and Play, Sunnyvale, with the Spanish Chamber of Commerce and the Valencia Chamber.
Network building"Agentic State: Hypothesis and Implementation," with the co-author of The Agentic State.
Policy dialogueUkraine's digital transformation and the transition to the agentic state.
Policy dialoguebridgingbeyond.net and the BRIDGING BEYOND Substack go live.
MilestoneThe Europe Center at Stanford and the Institute of European Studies at UC Berkeley.
Academic partnershipPicnic and talk with the California Frontier Project, organized by the San Francisco Association of Women Executives.
Network buildingIncluding the Spanish trade delegation during a visit by Spain's Minister of Economy, Trade and Business.
Institutional partnership🕰️ Did you know Berkeley's campanile was inspired by the one in Venice?
Bridging Beyond is a student-led policy taskforce — students, faculty, and practitioners from the US and Europe thinking together about the challenges that define our shared future. In summer 2026 we opened our doors with the first EuroSummer Clinic, hosting three European speakers from Ukraine, Germany and Estonia.
Questions or proposals for EuroSummer 2027? Please write to magallon@berkeley.edu.
Co-creator of the Diia ecosystem. Global advisor on GovTech, AI, and democratic resilience under pressure. Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council.
Founding Managing Director of the Global Government Technology Centre (WEF). Former founder of GovMind. MPhil in Public Policy, University of Cambridge.
Leading voice on digital government, data-driven public policy, and the Estonian model of AI-powered state transformation.
Join the conversation — as a speaker, a participant, or a partner. Write to magallon@berkeley.edu.
Working notes and essays at the intersection of democracy, public administration, and the transatlantic relationship.
Those of us who went through political science and public administration schools in the 2010s still carry new public management and the managerial model in our heads. Who is running the machines — and which machines are we even using?
Read the essayWe're putting at risk a combination unique in the world's political history: having both peace and freedom at the same time. It's time to push beyond.
Read the essayBRIDGING BEYOND doesn't have official partners yet — we're building those relationships deliberately, starting with conversations like this one. We're looking to connect with:
If your institution fits one of these, get in touch at magallon@berkeley.edu.
I am a Fulbright Scholar and Master of Public Affairs candidate at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy. As a Spanish civil servant working at the intersection of politics and public policy across Europe, I bring a practitioner's perspective to Berkeley's policy and innovation ecosystem.
I trained as a jurist, and I spent four years managing Spain's Recovery and Resilience Fund — the national plan behind NextGenerationEU — working on multilevel governance and results-based management, turning European commitments into public investment on the ground. That experience shaped how I think about institutions: reform is rarely a question of resources alone, and almost always a question of coordination, trust, and the capacity to learn from others.
I am now on leave from the Spanish civil service to complete a one-year mid-career MPA at Berkeley, focused on leadership and public policy. There, I founded BRIDGING BEYOND. In its first months, I convened policy dialogues with European leaders in digital government — Valeriya Ionan, Manuel Kilian and Ott Velsberg — built working relationships with the Spanish Consulate, EU member-state representations and Berkeley's institutes of international and European studies, and proposed and coordinated the August 2026 conversation at UC Berkeley with the Ambassador of the European Union to the United States. This fall I lead the student-led course Governing Difference at the Goldman School.
This initiative grew out of a simple observation: the conversations happening in Berkeley about AI governance, democratic resilience, and the future of public policy are conversations Europe needs too — and vice versa. I created BRIDGING BEYOND to make that exchange structural, not occasional.