EuroCircle started in 1999 as a free online informal community for European professionals and Europhiles (=anyone interested in Europe) and has now grown to more than 100,000 members. With no political, religious or ethnic affiliations, EuroCircle is a place where you can exchange ideas, tips, professional contacts and make friends. You can meet people offline at our local events or online through our membership features. EuroCircle was a social network before Facebook or the term social network had even been invented. Still free after more than 10 years and thousands of events in hundreds of cities, EuroCircle welcomes and attracts professionals from London to Los Angeles or New York to Johannesburg.
You also find EuroCircle on Facebook under groups (EuroCircle New York, EuroCircle Los Angeles, EuroCircle Chicago, EuroCircle Atlanta, San Francisco, London etc) as well as on Youtube and Twitter.
Our History
EuroCircle originated as one woman’s dream. Finnish lawyer Kaisa Kokkonen came to New York in 1992 feeling burnt-out and somewhat bored after a ten-year legal career. But it took a while before she decided to stay for good. “I began assimilating to New York life a year and a half after my arrival, only after I finally decided to stay in the US” Kaisa recalls. The internet was still in its infancy.
In 1997 Kaisa began contemplating the idea of some kind of informal online group for European professionals and expats and at the same time started playing with different names for the group until the final name was chosen. It took her another couple of years to build the structure for EuroCircle (Jan 11 1999 was the first event in New York City) and the rest is history. Since then many companies and individual groups have copied EuroCircle in one form or another but never managed to get the concept right.
Our teams
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Christophe Rouchon – EuroCircle’s web, design and code guy
Christophe is French and came to Chicago from London in 1999 where he was working as a derivatives broker for a French bank. He switched careers and moved to the bank’s Marketing department in Chicago where he designed the company’s brand and built intranets and clients portals. He joined our team in 2009 as our Director of Marketing and is responsible for the site. Contact Christophe – View his profile (members only) |
Jump to: Atlanta | Austin | Boston | Cancun | Chicago | Houston | Los Angeles | Miami | New York | Orange County | Philadelphia | Phoenix | San Diego | San Francisco | Silicon Valley | Washington DC
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Would you like to start a Circle in your own city or join a current team? Its free and easy, just contact us for more information. We are always looking for new people to expand into new cities all around the world. |
| ATLANTA | |
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Randall Valverde
Randall, who hails from Costa Rica, has been a long standing eurocircle member and started assisting with the co-hosting duties in January of 2011. All EuroCircle events take place every first Tuesday of the month unless otherwise indicated. Contact Randall – View his profile (members only) |
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David Nienhuis
David grew up in Europe and was one of the very first members to attend the inaugural meetings and then took over the Atlanta chapter and organized the monthly get-togethers, which he still does today. Contact David – View his profile (members only) |
| AUSTIN | |
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Kaisa Kokkonen – EuroCircle Founder and President
Kaisa came to New York from Finland to work for a year for Ernst & Young with the intention to return to Finland. In January, 1999 while working in New York City Kaisa founded EuroCircle. She now lives in Austin where she manages Eurocircle. Contact Kaisa – View her profile (members only) |
| BOSTON | |
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Burak Bacioglu
Originally from Istanbul, Burak is a software engineer at Microsoft. He first stayed in Seattle for a while and tried to get used to the rainy weather but finally gave up and moved to the east coast. Burak is extremely interested in music and arts. Contact Burak – View his profile (members only) |
| CHICAGO | |
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Maria Dollas
Maria has been in the US all her life. Her parents are Greek and her first language was Greek. She is the owner of MCD Events Inc and has been the Chicago lead for Eurocircle since 2000. Contact Maria – View her profile (members only) |
| HOUSTON | |
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Mary Beth Snodgrass
Mary Beth is a Texan who has spent time living and traveling in Europe. She’s a consultant at Acorn International which provides environmental and social risk consulting services. She enjoys running, surfing, traveling and trying to cook. Contact Mary Beth – View her profile (members only) |
| LOS ANGELES | |
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Dina Gontar
Dina moved from Ukraine to Los Angeles in 1991 where she is now the owner and founder of the event planning company Cosmo Events LA. She has produced events for West Hollywood, LA Kings, Geena Davis, Joni Mitchell and many more. Contact Dina – View her profile (members only) |
| MIAMI | |
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Gabriele Trappio
Gabriele is from Berlin. She traveled the world for 10 years as a flight attendant and moved to Florida in 93 after spending a year at the Treasure coast. Gabriele worked as a Marketing Director and joined Best Beach Real Estate in 2003. Contact Gabriele – View her profile (members only) |
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Gian Sol
Gian is currently organizing and hosting a variety of select, social and cultural events for EuroCircle. He comes from a rich European background and has lived in many places in the Americas and Europe. View Gian’s profile (members only) |
| NEW YORK | |
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Alexandra Spirer
Alex traveled to over 34 countries and hopes to make the 100 country club one day. She has been working in brand and online marketing for IYD International and lives in New York. Contact Alex – View her profile (members only). |
| ORANGE COUNTY | |
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Hervé Duboscq
Real Estate agent in beautiful OC at Coldwell Banker Residential. Herve specializes in resort style living, coastal living, bank owned, short sales, first time homeowners, investment and international properties. Contact Hervé – View his profile (members only) |
| PHILADELPHIA | |
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Sherry Kumar
Born and raised in Serbia (former Yugoslavia) to an Austrian mother and an Indian father, Sherry grew up moving around the world with her parents and developed a passion for languages, cultures and exotic locations. Contact Sherry – View her profile (members only) |
| PHOENIX | |
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Jeff Jessup
Jeff has been in Real Estate for many years as a Broker in Phoenix where he works with mostly European clients. His family came to the U.S from England (3rd generation). He has two daughters and has spent many summers in Moscow, Russia. Contact Jeff – View his profile (members only) |
| SAN DIEGO | |
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Minette Bonner
Minette is a health Care Entrepreneur whose favorite hobby is travel. A few of the places she has visited include: Germany, Switzerland, France, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, England, Scotland, South Africa, Senegal, Japan, Belgium, Netherlands and Italy. Minette love dancing and performs Brazilian Samba. Contact Minette – View her profile (members only) |
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Vlad Kroutik
Vlad is the founder of Viaway Inc. Originally from Ukraine he joined EuroCircle San Diego in 2012. Contact Vlad – View his profile (members only) |
| SAN FRANCISCO | |
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Marc James de Jong
Marc comes from the Netherlands where he joined the Naval Academy and graduated from the KIM (Royal Navy Institute). He then worked at the Ministry of Defense in the Hague and after positions in germany he now works for the Intercontinental Hotel Group in San Francisco. Contact Jeff – View his profile (members only) |
| SILICON VALLEY | |
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Layla Sabourian
Layla is originally from Iran with a touch of France. She has lived in Canada, USA, France, Russia and Mexico. Layla has worked for Logitech, eBay, Yahoo and is currently with SAP. She has a passion for matching people up and run a small dating service on the side. Contact Layla – View her profile (members only) |
| WASHINGTON DC | |
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brian sreniawski
Brian was born and raised in Chicago of Polish and Irish decent and maintains dual-citizenship with Ireland. Married, with two adorable kids, he now lives in DC since 2007. Brian is one of the partners of LA Boxing in Washington. Contact Brian – View his profile (members only) |
Jump to: Barcelona | Berlin | Brusells | Budapest | Geneva | Helsinki | Madrid | Milan | Munich | Paris | Rome | Vienna
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Would you like to start a Circle in your own city or join a current team? Its free and easy, just contact us for more information. We are always looking for new people to expand into new cities all around the world. |
| BARCELONA | |
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Manon Deblois
Manon is from Montreal, she loves traveling and left Canada in 1997 to explore, live and work in different countries like USA, Australia, Costa Rica, Mexico, The Netherlands and Singapore. She moved to Barcelona in 2002 and speak French, English and Spanish. Contact Manon – View her profile (members only) |
| BERLIN | |
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Ramona Abraham
Ramona is an Actress and Singer and also works as a German Translator and Editor. She was born in the US, traveled around the world as a child, grew up in Berlin and relocated to California in 2006. She is now back in Berlin. Contact Ramona – View her profile (members only) |
| BRUSSELS | |
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Oscar Karekzi
Oscar has been involved in sports and events management. Often traveling across Europe, Africa and North America for his job as freelance, he joined EuroCircle in 2010 and has been living in Brussels for 25 years. Contact Oscar – View his profile (members only) |
| BUDAPEST | |
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Bence Kutrik
Bence is a professional musician. He was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary. Bence holds 2 degrees in computer science and a bachelor’s degree in classical music composition. In 2001 he went to school in San Francisco then moved to Canada in 2005 where he promoted the Toronto circle and is no back in Budapest. Contact Bence – View his profile (members only) |
| GENEVA | |
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Hanna Steinbach
Hanna is originally from Germany but she has lived studied and worked (as lawyer) in Vienna, Montpellier, San Francisco, Berkeley, Stockholm and currently resides in Geneva where she works at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a special agency of the United Nations. Contact Hanna – View her profile (members only) |
| HELSINKI | |
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Marjo Benavides
Marjo moved back to Helsinki in 2011 after spending half of her life to date in New York City. Her background is in Residential Real Estate and now works for Kiinteistömaailma, Ullanlinnan Kodit. Contact Marjo – View her profile (members only) |
| MADRID | |
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Cesar Parra
Cesar has lived and worked in the U.S, U.K, Germany, Spain. He speak fluent Spanish, English and Italian and is the head of Food, Retail & Consumer M&A Advisory Spain at Deloitte. Contact Cesar – View his profile (members only) |
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Carmen Villanueva
Carmen is Peruvian and since 2009, Spanish too. She is a Certified Public Accountant and has worked for several years in Lima in auditing and accounting companies. She also worked as an assistant teacher at the PUCP Business Administration and Economic´s Faculty before she moved to Spain. Carmen now works in Madrid in the banking industry. Contact Carmen – View her profile (members only) |
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Adam Satir
Adam maintains residences in both Spain and the USA although most of his time these days is spent in Spain. He has spent most of his adult working life in the financial services sector and particularly the banking side where he started PosEcon Business Promotions and began the task of ‘creating synergies through economic cooperation’. Contact Adam – View his profile (members only) |
| MILAN | |
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Anna Scalzi Born in South Italy, Anna was a student in Milan and, after graduation, sheI became one of the youngest lawyer in Milan feeling called to international relations. Anna worked almost 20 years with important international law firms in Milan, England and USA. |
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Giovanni Terzi Giovanni works as an IT engineer. He is fluent in English and Portuguese and speaks good Spanish and also some German and French. has traveled extensively visiting 59 different countries. Giovanni has lived in Milan his whole life and he knows the best resources about his city and surely its best kept secrets. Contact Giovanni – View his profile (members only) |
| MUNICH | |
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Oktavia Weidmann |
| PARIS | |
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Claude Chapron
Claude was born Brittany in France and was an exchange student in the US after he graduated from High School. He got a Tourism degree and worked as a tour guide and travel agent. Claude also lived in Reunion Island, in Saudi Arabia for two years and, after more than eleven years in Paris, moved to Madrid where he have lived for 7 years. He also work as Regional Sales Manager in the EMEA region. Contact Claude – View his profile (members only) |
| ROME | |
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Aleksandra Joy Leciejewska
Born to a Polish mother and a Sudanese father Aleksandra grew up partly in Poland and partly in the United Arab Emirates, where she completed her high school education. Studied Marketing and Business initiative. She has been living in Rome since March 2010. Now she teaches English to little kids, and sell Vatican Tours. Contact Aleksandra – View her profile (members only) |
| VIENNA | |
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Ursula Weixlbaumer
I first got in touch with EuroCircle in Chicago, where I lived for 3 years. I made great friends there and EuroCircle made my social life so much easier. I am now back in Vienna and run EuroCircle with my friend Tom here.We want to provide a platform for people to meet and have fun in our monthly events – come join us! Contact Ursula – View her profile (members only) |
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Thomas Lepere
I first got in touch with EuroCircle at Chicago. A lot of people, which I met on the events, became friends and made me immediately feel at home. As I moved to Vienna a very good friend, who I met at the EuroCircle Chicago, introduced me to Maria and Leyli. After we met a couple of times, we decided together to launch the Vienna Circle. Contact Thomas – View his profile (members only) |
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Would you like to start a Circle in your own city or join a current team? Its free and easy, just contact us for more information. We are always looking for new people to expand into new cities all around the world. |
| ISTANBUL | |
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Alan Greenhalgh
Alan has over 15 years experience in business development, finance, marketing, public relations and communications having worked extensively with blue chip and entrepreneurial companies. A graduate of Business and Finance and Post Graduate of Marketing Management (Liverpool) he has found a welcoming home in the dynamic city of Istanbul and has lived and worked all over the world – Cape Town, Mexico City, Dubai, Moscow, France and Turkey. Contact Alan – View his profile (members only) |
| JOHANNESBURG | |
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Felicity Hudson
Felicity has previously lived in Edinburgh for four years as a student and traveled for several months through Spain and South America. She has done further traveling in Europe through Italy, France, Greece, Germany, Czech Republic and Austria and briefly through the States to visit friends in Colorado. She advise large listed and other financial organizations on all aspects of corporate and deal related communications. Contact Felicity – View her profile (members only) |
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Periklis Thivaios
Periklis joined Eurocircle in London in 2003 where he studied and worked for 6 years. He grew up by the coastline of Athens in Greece and, before launching Eurocircle in South Africa participated to events with Kaisa and the crew in New York for two years. Contact Periklis – View her profile (members only) |
- Article in Spanish from elperiodico.com: Internet dispara los grupos sociales y de negocios en BCN
- Article (pdf) in German from Kurier newspaper: Thomas Lepere and Ursula Weixelbauer in Vienna












































