Members

Simona Veleva, PhD, Lawyer.
Elected by the National Assembly Decision of 5 May 2022. Simona Veleva holds a PhD in Constitutional Law from the Faculty of Law of Sofia University ‘St. Kliment Ohridski’, where she graduated in law. Currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Media Law and Ethics and Copyright Law at the American University in Blagoevgrad.
Simona Veleva has worked with various media, journalists and organizations, including on projects related to ethical reporting of children in the media, fighting misinformation, combating hate speech and others.
She has worked as an expert at the Supreme Bar Council, and her work includes preparing opinions before the Constitutional Court, reviewing bills and other acts announced for public discussion and submitted to the National Assembly and preparing opinions on them.
She has worked with numerous organizations such as the Bulgarian Donors Forum, the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria (CITUB), UNICEF and others on human rights, children’s rights and the right to expression. Under her editorship the Bulgarian translations of the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese Constitutions have been published, as well as a collection of case law of the Federal Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Basic Law of Germany has been published in her translation. She is an expert at the International Digital Rights Fund — Digital Freedom Fund.
Simona Veleva is an active advocate for deaf people and their right to express their opinions. She actively participates in the working group of the Ministry of Education and Science on the development of the Bulgarian Sign Language Act (promulgated SG No 9 of 2 February 2021), representing organizations of deaf people before the National Assembly in the adoption of the bill. Alongside, she is working to enforce the Act and increase deaf people’s access to media and media services and ensure their right to express their opinions.

Gabriela Dimitrova Naplatanova-Ruseva, PhD journalist.
Appointed as a member of the Council for Electronic Media by a decree of President Rumen Radev on 9 May 2022.
Gabriela Naplatanova was awarded a master's degree from the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication in the Sofia University ‘St. Kliment Ohridski’, where she graduated in Public Relations major.
In the same faculty she was a visiting lecturer in the period 2015—2017.
She has trained with the IREX and IVLP programs of the U.S. Department of State and the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, and has participated in numerous U.S. Mission to NATO media programs.
In 2019 she defended her dissertation on ‘Managing Media Effects and Media Operations during Armed Conflict’ at the ‘G.S. Rakovski’ Military Academy Faculty of National Security.
She started her professional career at Nova TV in 1997. She has been part of the News and Current Broadcasts editorial team at bTV since the establishment of the TV in 2000.
She has covered intensively topics related to Bulgaria's domestic and foreign policy, security and defence issues, armed conflicts in the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan.
She is the author of several dozen documentary projects on foreign policy and military issues related to NATO, cyber security, data protection and refugee issues.
Over the years she has hosted several special studios on bTV on topics related to defence and foreign policy.
Winner of numerous awards and honours for her journalistic work and documentary projects in her 25-year television career.

Kadrinka Kadrinova is one of the established international journalists in Bulgaria. She was born in Rome. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Sofia University "St. Kl. Ohridski”. She has more than 40 years of continuous experience as a journalist in the media.
She has worked in the newspapers "Narodna Mladezh", "Dialog", "24 Hours", "Sega", "Monitor", she was deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine "Tema". She was an editor of the "Horizont" program of the Bulgarian National Radio, commentator on the "Barikada" website, responsible editor of the website of the Union of Bulgarian Journalists. She is the author of thousands of publications that have appeared over the years in these and many other media.
She is the author of the books “Under the Sky of Matagalpa” (1987), “Romances in Global Blood” (2005), “Vietnam - phoenix and dragon” (2009 and 2010 - expanded English edition) and “The magic Vietnam” (2020). She has been a long-time chairperson of the Association of Spanish-Speaking Journalists in Bulgaria. She is a member of the Union of Bulgarian Journalists and a member of the Union of Bulgarian Writers.
She has won a number of national and foreign journalism and literary awards. She has been awarded the Order of Friendship by Vietnam (2010), the Order of Friendship by Cuba (2012) and the Officer's Cross of the Order of Civil Service by Spain (2017).

Prolet Velkova is a radio journalist with many years of experience. Her journalistic career began at BNR as a presenter of the programme ‘Good Day’ /one of the first journalistic programmes in the national radio/ and continued at ‘Darik Radio’ — one of the first private radio stations. She was a producer and presenter of the morning block ‘Darik Café’, and then of the journalistic show ‘Who Speaks’ — a popular discussion format, whose central topics are politics, social processes, media, education, rights.
She was editor-in-chief of ‘Darik Radio’ from 1996 to 1998 — years of profound social and political changes in Bulgaria. During this period the journalistic team of ‘Darik’ mobilized efforts in favour of the democratization of Bulgarian society, which made it one of the most authoritative and influential media of the transition.
Prolet Velkova is a participant and initiator of various civic activities over the years — she was a member of the ‘Board of the Open Society’ Foundation, founder of the ‘Media Development Center’ Foundation, founder and executive director of the ‘Darik’ Foundation. Similar to her work as a journalist, her civic commitments are in the field of democratic values, media, human rights, education, ecology.
She was elected as a member of the Ethics Committee in the electronic media in its first composition.
She has been awarded numerous prizes, the most valuable of which are the awards from the journalists’ college and civil organizations, such as: The Grand Prize of the ‘Mediamix’ Media Festival in Albena for a political talk show; the ‘Golden Apple’ Award of the National Network for Children for a contribution to the well-being of Bulgarian children; the ‘Heroes’ Award of the largest Bulgarian volunteer platform ‘Time Heroes’ for promoting and supporting volunteer causes.
Prolet Velkova is co-author of the book ‘The Words — Conversations before a Straw Hat on ‘Darik Radio’. The book contains unconventional interviews with iconic personalities. The interviews, done  as a game , on the associative principle, reveal in depth the emotional and value world of the interviewees.