Luis Castellar Maymo has over 16 years of experience in development cooperation projects, particularly in conflict and post-conflict settings. He has a solid background in project management, having been involved in all the steps of the Project Cycle Management, from a donor to implementing partner perspective. In addition, Luis brings to ECES a wealth of senior expertise in the field of Good Governance / Democratisation, having participated in 19 missions focused on elections, having represented organisations ranging from EU Election Observation Missions, UN, USAID, ECES and the EU.

In terms of specific country knowledge, Luis has developed an an important knowledge of the Afghan electoral process, having been involved as EU Election Observation Mission (EU OEM) Core Team member during the 2009 Presidential and provincial elections, having performed as EU Delegation Task Manager for Good Governance from 2013 to 2015 and as Senior Electoral Expert for a USAID - funded project in Afghanistan since 2017.
As a Core Team Member of the EU OEM, Mr Castellar Maymo coordinated over 100 long- and short- term EU Observers, and drafted the ‘Methodology for Election Observers in Conflict Situations’. In his role as Task Manager for Good Governance at the EU Delegation to Afghanistan, Luis was responsible for the political, technical management and monitoring of EU funding to various good governance programmes implemented by organisations such as the World Bank and UNDP. Moreover, he coordinated the EU Roadmap for Engagement with Civil Society in Afghanistan, and represented the EU in technical election working groups.

More recently, as Senior Election Advisor for a USAID-funded project implemented by International Counterpart, Luis conducted a needs assessment and designed a project proposal to support civil society organisations’ engagement in the Afghan electoral process under Counterpart International’s ACEP project. He subsequently implemented the ACEP election strategy for 2018/2019, establishing the election unit and training new staff and facilitating CSOs’ participation in the Election Coordination Group (CECG).

In consideration of the above, he will supervise the project implementation of the ECES project in Afghanistan carrying out very frequent missions in Kabul while he will also provide his expertise for the implementation of activities to other ECES projects.  He will therefore contribute to the ongoing projects in Nigeria, Jordan, South Africa, Senegal, Madagascar etc.. This will include the project entitled "European Response on Mediation Support" where ECES in consortium with the College of Europe and other organisations will provide mediation support to EU services in Brussels and EU Delegations. Luis holds a Law Degree and a Post-graduate degree in International Affairs and speaks fluently Spanish, Catalan, English, French and Italian.