Marian Mandache was born in an Ursari Roma family in Romania. He became a lawyer in the Bucharest Bar (2005) and got his LL.M. from Columbia University (2010) when he also served as a teacher assistant for Prof. Jack Greenberg. Marian works on Roma rights since 1999 and he is currently the Executive Director of Romani CRISS. He acquired valuable field experience by conducting numerous fact-finding missions on various human rights violations. He drafted complaints to the ECtHR. He litigated landmark cases on hate-speech (against the President of Romania, the Prime-Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs), on school segregation (School 19 Craiova) or law enforcement misconduct. Marian was part of expert groups drafting law proposals (e.g. amendments to the Romanian anti-discrimination legislation) and developing international standards (CoE, EC, OSCE). Marian delivered training for judges, police officers and civic activists. He authored six books on the human rights situation of Roma.