About
How I got here, and how I work.
A decade of coordination inside a non-profit arts hub in Greece, and what I carry from it into the work I do now in the Netherlands.
Elli Zafeiridou Georgiadou — Leiden, NL
I'm a project and programme coordinator who learned the work by doing it — for a decade, inside a non-profit arts hub in Greece where I grew from volunteer to board member.
That meant a bit of everything: running the full lifecycle of Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps programmes, producing festivals, securing funding, building a recruitment function from scratch, and handling the live sound and operations underneath it all. What ties it together is coordination — taking something ambitious and under-resourced and giving it the structure to actually happen.
I work well with diverse, multicultural teams and the messy middle of a project, where most things quietly go wrong unless someone is paying attention. I care most about art and culture as tools for social change — youth, education, inclusion, human rights.
That instinct doesn't switch off at home: I build the automations and scenes that run our house on Home Assistant, and use it every day. It's the same habit — noticing the small repeated things and making them happen on their own.
Now based in Leiden, I'm looking for coordination and programme roles with cultural and mission-driven organisations where that experience is useful from day one.
My path
In my own words — from a family arts hub in Thessaloniki to coordination work in the Netherlands.
I didn't set out to become a coordinator. I grew into it — by being the person who built the structure everything else could run on.
It started as a family thing
My parents founded Fix In Art, and I started helping while I was still at school — working the kitchen and bar at music events, cleaning, assisting with whatever was needed. I grew up inside the place before I ever had a title in it.
I became the one who built the structure
I started as a volunteer and intern, and over the years became an executive and a board member. What I loved most was the structure and the workflow of the organisation — the templates, the manuals, the systems that let it actually run.
So that became my part. I built the internship department from zero: its workflow and structure, the accounts behind it, and the manuals for how we would find interns and define what we needed and wanted from them.
Given a blank page, I built the whole thing
At the start of the organisation I was handed the social media with nothing in place. I opened every account, gathered and took the photos, made the videos and the content to post, and organised it into a consistent presence. Taking something from zero to running is the work I like most.
A new country, and the same instinct
When I moved to the Netherlands I was looking for opportunities and people to build with. I answered a LinkedIn ad to volunteer with the Empowerment Foundation, met the team, brought ideas, and set about building them — meeting people for collaborations and explaining the projects we already had.
My part was to start the funding department — it didn't exist before me — and gather my knowledge into it: researching opportunities, organising everything in Notion, and mapping the next steps — where to go and who to meet. Getting all of it into a clear, usable structure, documented so others could pick it up, was the work I'm proudest of there.
Putting down roots — and building again
After nine intense years I settled properly into a new country — learning Dutch, working customer-facing retail at Zizzi in Leiden, and getting to know how Dutch organisations work from the inside. And I did what I always do with a blank page: I built something. With Elli is my registered independent platform (KVK) — publishing practical guides in three languages and facilitating workshops online and in person in Leiden. It keeps my coordination, content, and facilitation work active while I look for the next programme role.
What all of it taught me
How to communicate what needs to be done. How to organise a project from the first idea to the final report. How to improvise when things don't go to plan. And, more recently, patience — that some things can't be pushed before they're ready. Along the way I also learned how non-profits in the Netherlands really work: their structure, their options, their opportunities.
How I work
The working principles a decade of coordination left me with.
Start to finish
I take a project from the first idea all the way to the final report — and I keep track of the whole arc, not just my slice of it.
Communication is the job
Most of coordination is making sure everyone knows what has to be done, and by when. Clear beats clever.
Build systems that outlast me
I leave behind templates, manuals and structure, so the work doesn't depend on me being in the room. The procedure book I wrote was still in use after I left.
Improvise when the plan breaks
Something goes wrong in the middle of every project. I stay calm and find another way through rather than freezing.
Patience
I've learned not to force things before they're ready — some things need time, and pushing only breaks them.
Structure over chaos
Give me something ambitious and under-resourced and my instinct is to organise it — into a workflow, a schedule, a system that holds.
Get in touch
Let's talk about your next programme or event.
If you're a cultural or mission-driven organisation looking for someone to coordinate the work and make the room run — I'd love to hear from you.
© 2026 Elli Zafeiridou Georgiadou · Project & Programme Coordinator · Design with thanks to George Zafeiridis