Introducing Firefly’s new Director

Chrissie Cvetković-Hirst joins Firefly International from Corra Foundation, a Scotland-based grant-making charity, where she led Corra’s human rights, anti-racism and international grant-making and worked on the cross-cutting issues of anti-racism and safeguarding. Prior to moving to Edinburgh in 2018, Chrissie worked in the field of international development for civil society organisations, the UN and OSCE, with 15 years of field-based experience in conflict-affected settings, primarily the Balkans, Afghanistan and Georgia.

Chrissie’s experience includes grass-roots and co-produced initiatives with communities, area-based development programmes, and policy work to strengthen national institutions and the strengthening and implementation of international commitments. Thematically, this has spanned democratisation, including gender aspects of local government and women’s political participation, regional development, human and minority rights, and migration, including migrant and refugee return and integration. She has worked at a strategic level in successive roles, leading programme design, consultation and evaluation and learning processes and delivering consultancy assignments that include strategic programme review, planning and policy development in key areas such as ethics and safeguarding.

Chrissie grew up in the Middle East before attending high school in Edinburgh. She studied at undergraduate level at Cambridge University and has two postgraduate degrees in international relations and conflict from the London School of Economics and Coventry University’s Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, as well as a postgraduate certificate in migrant and refugee integration.

As a student, she volunteered in the West Bank and worked in short-term stipend posts in Gaza, writing her MSc thesis on Palestine. She met her husband through work in Belgrade and, now with their two kids, the family regularly travel to the Balkans.

Chrissie’s professional experience and postgraduate study have seen a focus on peacebuilding and migration as areas of particular interest to her, also reflected in her voluntary work. Chrissie holds voluntary positions as Vice Chair of The Welcoming Association, a migrant integration non-profit organisation in Edinburgh, and as a board member with People in Peril / Človek v ohrození, a Slovakian non-governmental organisation working on humanitarian relief and social integration in Slovakia, and as Chair of the Policy Committee of Scotland’s International Development Alliance. She has also volunteered with a community sponsorship group supporting a Syrian refugee family and continues to volunteers with CAMScot, a charity supporting Scottish state school applicants to Cambridge University.

In her free time, Chrissie enjoys walking, (inexpert) gardening and board games and reading with her kids.