Odysseas Digbassanis

Odysseas Digbassanis is a final year student at the University of Warwick pursuing a BA Honours in History and Politics and an alumnus of ACS Athens, graduating in 2019. He is the recipient of ACS Athens’ Principal’s Award for Outstanding School Leadership and the CAS Award.

In the past year he has worked at FleishmanHillard in Brussels and has offered his services as Secretary for External Affairs at the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in August 2022.

In his role as Senior Research Executive at FleishmanHillard in Brussels, he advised major international financial services clients on political, legislative, and economic developments in the EU and specialized in advising insurance companies on EU sanctions policy following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. He was also a part of the insurance desk working on the legislative review of European solvency regulation.

At his time in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, Odysseas served as Secretary for External Affairs coordinating closely with the office of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. He focused on assisting in the communications of the Patriarchate and its relations with foreign missions in Turkey in addition to inter-religious relations with the Apostolic Nunciature. He also assisted in press relations and in-person English-to-Greek interpretation. Lastly, he aided in the hosting the Greek Government’s delegation to the Ecumenical Patriarchate during the Feast of the Indiction, which comprised of the Greek Finance Minister and Greek Deputy Foreign Minister for the Diaspora amongst others.

In his undergraduate studies he has been the Deputy News Editor of the University of Warwick’s student newspaper The Boar, recognised as one of the best in the UK. He was also elected to represent students of his degree in the Student Staff Liaison Committee in 2019. In addition, in 2020, Odysseas was elected to serve as Executive Vice President of Warwick Think Tank, a student association leading in public policy research and coordination with other public policy institutes specializing across the sectors of foreign relations and economic policy amongst other areas. He was also a moderator for the inaugural Warwick Law Summit in 2021, hosting discussions with the former UK Minister for Education and a Member of the European Parliament on the subject of ‘law and politics’.

Odysseas is passionate about public policy, communications, equitable economic policy, and effective foreign and diplomatic policy. Odysseas is also a passionate writer and continues to write articles for acclaimed student publications in the UK, with hopes to continue writing after university. He aims to continue his studies at postgraduate level and build on his professional experience, while always remembering his time at ACS Athens fondly.