Natalia Popova Profile

Ms Natalia Popova is a labour economist with the ILO Labour Migration Branch. Previously, she worked as Employment and Skills Development Specialist with the ILO Decent Work Technical Support Team and Country Office for Central and Eastern Europe, based in Budapest, Hungary. She has been engaged in delivering technical assistance on employment, vocational education and training, and labour migration. Areas of research interest include links between labour migration and skills issues, return migration, social inclusion and youth employment.

Before joining the ILO in 2009, she worked for the European Training Foundation (an EU agency that provides assistance to transition and developing countries in the areas of education, training and labour market systems reforms) in Turin as employment specialist. She has also worked on short-term assignments for the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).

She holds a PhD in governance and policy analysis (return migration) from Maastricht University, master’s degree in international trade and commercial diplomacy from the Monterey Institute of International Policy Studies, California and a bachelor's degree in foreign service and international economics from Georgetown University, Washington DC.