Katelijn Verstraete is a cultural leader with over 20 years of experience in the business sector, creative sector and international relations between Europe and Asia. Passionate and creative enabler of dialogues, exchanges, skills and policy development building trust and connections between people and countries. Katelijn is a boundary spanner with arts and culture at the heart, working across languages, cultures, sectors, geographies, and with a diverse group of stakeholders. Passionate Belgian/European/Global citizen with professional expertise and networks worldwide and a genuine concern for more sustainable living. She switched from the business sector in China to co-found of the (then) first independent arts space in Shanghai (BizArt), was developing training, information provision and Asia connections for Europe's International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts (<http://www.ietm.org) and www.on-the-move.org and led on Asia-Europe cultural exchange programmes in the Asia Europe Foundation ( www.asef.org & www.culture360.asef.org).> She has been leading for 8.5 years as Regional Director Arts the work of the British Council in arts and creative industries in 14 countries in East Asia developing innovative country and regional programmes to strengthen networks between the UK and Asia through artistic exchanges, skills development and by strengthening the role of arts & culture in sustainable development. She holds an MA degree in Sinology (Leuven/ Leiden) and Marketing Management (Ghent) and studied in China (Nanjing). She is currently pursuing a degree in Evaluation at the University of Melbourne and is engaged in project developed, most recently the Fair Collaboration Toolkit for EUNIC. Katelijn is a Fellow of Salzburg Global Seminar.