Iliriana Gjoni is a pianist from Montenegro. She is a graduate of the University of Music Karlsruhe, Germany, where she earned her two master’s degrees in piano and chamber music with highest honors. She is the winner of many prizes at international musical competitions. Iliriana has studied with Boris Kraljevic and Lidija Skender in Montenegro, Nora Çashku in Tirana, Lucia Passaglia in Italy and with Michael Uhde and Markus Stange in Karlsruhe. She also studied at the “Luisa D’Annunzio” Conservatory in Pescara. In June 2015 she performed in front of 40.000 people at the manifestation “300 years Karlsruhe”. In 2018 she made her debut at Symphony Space in New York. Most recently she was part of the Music Diplomacy Fellowship of the US Department of State program, OneBeat. She is a political analyst at the renowned Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (center in Brussels), one of the world’s leading think-tanks. In her role she focuses on EU enlargement and Western Balkan politics.