Natalia Zachartzi graduated from the University of Lincolnshire & Humberside Hull Campus in 2004 receiving her BA(Hons) in Social Work. While in England she worked for Organisations such as Cornerhouse Yorkshire, SureStart & HomeStart Hull, Ravenswood etc. Since 2008 she is the Scientific Director of the Centers for the Prevention of Addictions and the Promotion of Psychosocial Health SEIRIOS (Municipality of Thessaloniki in collaboration with OKANA – Organisation Against Drugs).
Since 2022 she has also working as a child protective officer at the Association for the Disabled “Action for Something Else”. In 2020 she received her MSc in Criminal Law and Addictions from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with honours. Her thesis focused on Prisoners' experiences highlighting the importance of the provision of therapy instead of imprisonment for the addicted drug users. As of 2020, she is a member of the Board and the coordinator for ISSUP Greece.
During the past years, she has organised and/or participated in many conferences such as the ISSUP Thessaloniki Conference (2024), the 8th Congresso Internacional Freemind (2023), the ISSUP Abu Dhabi Conference (2022), the 28th WFTC World Conference (2022), the 1st European Conference on Prevention (2018), the 17th EFTC Conference (2019) etc.
In 2023 she joined the task force of the Declaration of Oviedo (https://www.oviedodeclaration.org/) fighting to bring prevention at the forefront of drug policies.
She is a certified INEP+ trainer and a certified trainer on the “Building Competencies for the Social Work Workforce in Europe and Central Asia” program. She has also undertaken the ASAP Training in 2021.
Since 2021 she has been implementing training programs for the Greek National School of Judges on the rights of the child, the rights of the LGBTQI+ community, and the importance of using the alternatives to incarceration in the judicial system. Since 2022 she is a lecturer at the National School of Public Administration teaching a course on inclusion of disabled people in the workplace. She is also a member of the Observatory for Child-Friendly Justice of the Ministry of Justice in collaboration with the University of West Attica.
Since 2023 she has been a trainer at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, while she has taught as an invited specialist in the Undergraduate and Postgraduate Program of the Department of Social Work of the Democritus University of Thrace, the Postgraduate Program "Criminal Law and Addictions" of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the undergraduate program of Psychology of Addictions of Diree College.
She speaks English, French, Spanish and can communicate using the sign language.