May Zanni

President & Co-founder

Women Act, Greece

May Zanni is the president and co-founder of Women Act, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization empowering women in leadership positions in the public sphere of Greece. May is a political analyst currently holding the position of special advisor at the Secretariat of the Prime Minister of the Hellenic Republic. She obtained her BA in History and Politics from Queen Mary College, University of London, her MSc in European Politics from Birkbeck College, University of London and her MSc in Politics of Empire and Post-Imperialism from London School of Economics.

May has had work experience at the House of Commons in London, the Institute for Democracy Konstantinos Karamanlis in Athens, the European Parliament in Brussels and UNESCO in Paris. She worked as a research assistant focusing on the linkage of European think tanks for the Trans European Policy Studies Association (TEPSA) in Brussels  and then for the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris where she was responsible for its Relations with Intergovernmental Organizations. When she returned to Greece, she worked as advisor to the Minister for Justice, to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and in the private sector as a political analyst.

May represented Greece in the International Visitor Leadership Program on “Women in Public Service” organized by the US Department of State in Washington, D.C in 2011. She participated in the Kokkalis Foundation Program “Public Leaders in Southeast Europe” of the Harvard Kennedy School in Istanbul, Turkey in 2012. May was awarded a certificate of completion for the “Women and Power” Program in May 2022 from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Executive Education.

From 2011 until 2016 May was the Deputy International Secretary of New Democracy and from 2016 until 2019 its Deputy Secretary of Strategic Planning & Communications. May is an alternate member of the Board of the Jockey Club of Greece and also served as a member of the Board of the Hellenic Alumni Association of London School of Economics.

She is the mother of one daughter, Olympia.