ANDRZEJ SCHAFERNAKER

 

 

Andrzej Schafernaker is Partner & Country Director DAMSON Group (Bulgaria). Andrzej has over 30 years professional experience of which over 20 years are in consultancy and management. He specializes in private sector development with broad experience in emerging markets and transition economies, including restructuring, privatization, and enterprise improvement of private sector companies in Balkans, Central Europe and former Soviet Union. He advises groups of enterprises on supply-chain building and collaboration, including cluster formation in Europe and outside the region. Andrzej worked with a number of bottom-up and top-down clusters in Croatia, Bulgaria and Serbia to facilitate cluster-cohesion, and competitiveness-building activities in cooperation with cluster stakeholders such as national and local government, RDAs, training organizations, universities, R&D and innovation institutes. He also worked with a wide range of industry sectors in manufacturing and services, for example: agribusiness, shipbuilding, machines and tools, furniture, shoes, car battery, plastic goods, building construction, ICT. Skilled communicator and accustomed to working with senior executives and Government officials.

Andrzej also has specific experience in working with shipbuilding industry on restructuring and organizational development. He has worked with shipyards in Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Montenegro. He has also been involved in SME development including access to finance , business development services for enterprise improvement, and institutional development for improved public sector services and business environment for small business.

Andrzej is Partner with Maconis where his assignments include supporting the Government of Azerbaijan in development of the industry sector and the industry department of the Ministry of Economy and Industry, private sector development planning, and facilitating process of private sector development strategic planning in Kosovo involving Ministry for Trade & Industry, subordinated agencies and inputs from other line ministries and public institutions. He did performance evaluation of USAID PAD for Economic Growth programme for supporting Government of Kosovo in implementing Economic Growth strategies. Led evaluation in first ever USAID PAD evaluation. He also evaluated USAID Regional Economic Growth Project covering all W. Balkans countries, and also evaluated Polish Operational Programmes funded under Partnership agreement. As team leader for EBRD Trade Ready, he performed capacity building of partner banks, business support organizations and consultants to support SMEs in accessing trade finance services through the provision of integrated finance and non-finance TA. Andrzej also trained Belarusian local government and public institutions on support to innovating SMEs.

As Cluster Development Consultant, Andrzej also supported the Government of Azerbaijan in the development of the industry sector. He was also the consultant to Kazakhstan Regional Development Project

Andrzej also worked with Chemonics International at BIP USAID project, worked as SME Policy Expert at DFC SA in Barcelona, and was the Country Manager for The DFC Group. Andrzej graduated as MBA from Cranfield University, did MSc in Naval Architecture from Gdansk University of Technology, and prior to it, he did BSc (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering from University of Surrey.