Mija Lorbek, MSc, is a cultural manager working in the fields of culture, new media, and innovation. She is currently the CEO of European Capital of Culture Nova Gorica Gorizia GO! 2025. Throughout her career, she has worked at The Intersection of culture, technology, and entrepreneurship, including as CEO of the international development company UNIKI Intelligent Media, programme manager of Xcenter, and manager of Klub K4.
Career
In the early stages of her career, Lorbek worked in music management as a project manager at the classical music agency Gallus Carniolus, and later as manager of Ljubljana’s Club K4. She subsequently worked on projects at Cyberpipe including the open technologies festival HAIP, which combined artistic and technological practices. As co-author, she participated in the award-winning Vienna Roboexotica project DWI.bot. Lorbek served as CEO of UNIKI a company developing interactive multimedia solutions for events and exhibitions. The company collaborated with international clients including the BBC, Intel, and Coca-Cola. She also participated in organising international trade fairs in the United Kingdom and the United States. She later worked as programme director of Xcenter, an official programme of the European Capital of Culture, where she later collaborated on the Xmobil project. In 2023, she became Chief of Staff to the Mayor of the Urban Municipality of Nova Gorica, where she coordinated municipal development projects and was responsible for the European Capital of Culture 2025 project. In 2023, she was appointed acting CEO of GO! 2025, and in 2024 she was selected as CEO through a public tender. The institution coordinates the European Capital of Culture Nova Gorica - Gorizia GO! 2025 project connecting the towns of Nova Gorica and Gorizia. The project gained international attention as the first cross-border European Capital of Culture. Following a visit by a delegation of Members of the European Parliament from the Committee on Culture and Education (CULT), committee chair Hannes Heide stated that “this is the most outstanding European Capital of Culture so far”.The project is conceived as a sustainable and developmental cultural cross-border cooperation and connecting young people from Slovenia and Italy. She has participated in international professional forums, including Ravello Lab and the event Stati Generali della Cultura in Turin and Buch Wien forum Kulturführer Mitteleuropa 2025.
Education
Lorbek graduated in communication studies from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana. Her thesis Media Arts (2005) received the University’s Prešeren Award. She earned a master’s degree at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, in the Nonprofit Organization Management programme. For her master’s thesis Leadership Models for Encouraging Innovation in High-Tech Companies, she received the international Trimo Research Award.
Professional work
Lorbek is the author of professional and academic works in the field of media arts and articles on innovation. She also participated in the project konS ≡ PARK – Academy for Contemporary Investigative Art, which received an Honorary Mention at the international Ars Electronica festival.
Personal life
After living in Ljubljana and London, she moved to Nova Gorica in 2012, where she lives with her daughter and long-term partner.