David Salvo is a senior fellow and managing director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund. An expert in Russian affairs, Salvo has been analyzing the Kremlin’s authoritarian toolkit to undermine democracy at home and abroad throughout his career.
Salvo has worked at ASD since 2017, first as a resident fellow and then as deputy director. He is the principal author of The ASD Policy Blueprint for Countering Authoritarian Interference in Democracies and makes regular media appearances, including on NPR, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and ABC News, to discuss US-Russian relations, Russian foreign policy toward its near abroad, and Russian tactics and objectives to undermine democracy in the United States and Europe.
Prior to joining GMF, Salvo was a foreign service officer in the US Department of State, serving most recently as the deputy secretary of state’s policy advisor for Europe, Eurasia, and international security issues. He also advised senior-level State Department negotiators on the protracted conflicts in the South Caucasus, worked on US policy toward NATO and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and served overseas in Russia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. He speaks Russian and Serbo-Croatian and has a basic knowledge of French.
David received his master’s degree from Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies and a bachelor’s degree in government and Russian from Georgetown. He is an avid music lover and plays in several DC-area bands, including a tribute to the renowned rock band Phish.
Elen Aghekyan was a junior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy. She is an MA candidate at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale, where she focuses on the intersection of disinformation and democratic resilience. Elen is interested in how communities around the world are confronting unique vulnerabilities to disinformation, including through media literacy and civic education. She began her career at the democracy watchdog Freedom House, where she was a research analyst for the organization’s flagship Freedom in the World report as well as special research on modern authoritarianism, with a regional focus on Eurasia. She received her BA in history and government, summa cum laude, from Cornell University. Elen grew up between Armenia and the United States, and is a fan of long-distance running, crosswords, and languages. She is a native speaker of Armenian and Russian and has a working knowledge of German. If you are wondering how to pronounce her name, it is EH-len (like Ellen) ah-GEK-yahn.
Master of Political Science, Junior Research Fellow at the Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies. I.F. Kuras of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She is a graduate of the courses "Management in the Non-Governmental Sector" (2018) and "Data Based Policy Writing and Visualization" (2021) of the Ukrainian Catholic University, participant of the Open World Program funded by the US Congress (2019). PhD in Political Science. She has seven years of experience in the non-governmental sector. He teaches a course on public procurement at the master's program of the Poltava University of Economics and Trade. Conducted about 30 trainings for the non-governmental sector and applicants on working with the public procurement system.
Ambassador Alexander Arvizu was a resident distinguished fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy. Alex spent 36 years as a career Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State, achieving the rank of Minister-Counselor. He advanced American interests with multiple countries in various stages of political transition, often against the backdrop of complex security environments. As the longest-serving U.S. Ambassador to Albania, from 2010 until 2015, Alex championed initiatives designed to combat official corruption, promote media transparency and accountability, and strengthen grassroots participation in civil society. Earlier in his career, as the Deputy Chief of Mission in Thailand, Alex directed the multi-dimensional U.S. Government crisis response to the catastrophic Indian Ocean tsunami in late 2004. Alex held several challenging senior policymaking positions in Washington. While Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asia and the Pacific 2007-2009, he strengthened coordination with key American allies Japan and South Korea in the face of threatening behavior from North Korea. As Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement 2015-2017, Alex was responsible for overseeing multi-million dollar assistance programs for the Middle East and Africa focused on counterterrorism and criminal justice reform. Earlier in his career Alex served as Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council, shepherding inputs from the Department of Treasury, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, and other U.S. agencies in response to the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s, which had devastated the economies of South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand. Alex is a first-generation American. His mother was from Kyoto, Japan, and his father – an enlisted U.S Army infantryman with service spanning thirty years from the Second World War to Vietnam – was a native of Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico. The family settled in Colorado Springs, where Alex grew up. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University. He has studied several languages, including Japanese, Korean, Thai and Khmer. Alex served as a mentor to the State Department chapter of the Asian American Foreign Affairs Association. Married with one daughter, he is a devoted Washington Nationals season ticketholder.
Isabelle Atkins is a communications trainee at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Originally from the Washington DC area, she is now a rising fourth year student at the University of Georgia pursuing a major in journalism and a minor in design and media. Isabelle has a passion for blending her interests in storytelling, effective communication, and design to create positive change. While at university, she works for The Red & Black Publishing Company as a writer on the culture desk. She produces articles about the Athens, Georgia community on a weekly deadline. She is currently studying international mass communications in Croatia, where she is learning valuable information and skills from media practitioners in Zagreb, Dubrovnik and Split. While abroad, she is also running the program’s social media accounts in order to promote global educational opportunities to prospective students.
Rita Barbosa Lobo is a program assistant for the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund, where she serves as the assistant to the head of European operations.
In her studies, she focused on European Union law and common law, graduating from the University of Kent with a Bachelor of Laws and the University of Amsterdam with a Master of Laws. Prior to joining ASD, Rita was a Schuman trainee at the European Parliamentary Research Service, External Policies Unit. Before that she was a program assistant at the European Policy Centre, Europe in the World program and a research fellow at the United Nations University Institute on Comparative Regional Integration Studies. Rita’s interests lie in European foreign policy.
Peter Benzoni is a senior investigative research officer on the information manipulation team at the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund, where he manages ASD's data-driven tools, develops new methodologies to combat information threats, and conducts open-source investigations.
Peter most recently was a data analyst with Atlas Public Policy, where he was involved in the development of many of ASD’s tools—most notably, the Hamilton dashboard. Prior to his work at Atlas, Peter spent time as a cybersecurity associate with the US Department of Energy and as a development consultant with Accenture. He holds a B.S. in computer engineering and a B.A. in political science and international studies from Iowa State University.
Cameron Bertron was a research intern with ASD during the fall of 2021. Prior to joining ASD, Cameron completed her master’s degree in Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford. As an undergraduate, she studied Slavic Languages and Literature as well as Global Security. Her research interests include civil society within authoritarian regimes and information manipulation operations. She is currently working as a Fulbright ETA in Mongolia.
Kristine Berzina is a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund and was formerly head of the geopolitics team at the Alliance for Securing Democracy. Berzina works on building transatlantic cooperation to counter authoritarian interference in democracies. In this role she focuses on U.S.–EU relations, NATO, digital technology, disinformation, and energy topics. Berzina appears frequently in international media, including The Financial Times, the BBC, NPR, Deutsche Welle, Euronews, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
Prior to joining GMF, Berzina worked on energy security, transatlantic cooperation, and climate change and security in Brussels and Berlin. A native of Latvia, Berzina grew up in the United States. She received her master’s degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge and her bachelor's in political science and history from Yale University. Berzina is a native speaker of English and Latvian, has worked in German, and has a basic knowledge of Russian and French.
Corinna Blutguth is a program officer in GMF's Berlin office. Within the Transatlantic Programming Berlin, she coordinates programming and research on U.S.-German relations, transatlantic security, and German domestic and foreign policy. She supports the Alliance for Securing Democracy’s work on the German Elections, identifying and analyzing information manipulation targeting Germany’s elections. Before joining GMF, Corinna worked as a program officer for a public-private-partnership of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Robert Bosch Foundation, and the German Council on Foreign Relations. She also gained experience working for the Kolleg-Forschergruppe Transformative Power of Europe at Freie Universität Berlin. Corinna holds a master's degree in political science from the University of Potsdam and studied European Studies in Magdeburg and Brno. Next to her native German, she speaks English and Spanish and has a basic knowledge of French and Czech.
Jessica Brandt was head of policy and research for the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Her research interests and recent publications focus on foreign interference, disinformation, and techno-authoritarianism and their impact on transatlantic democracies. Her work has been widely published and quoted in the Washington Post, Associated Press, BBC, NPR, Bloomberg, Vox, Slate, and Wired, among others.
Jessica was previously a fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, special adviser to the president of the Brookings Institution, and an International and Global Affairs fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. She received her BA from Johns Hopkins University and MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Jessica is a member of the Advisory Council of the American Ditchley Foundation and a David Rockefeller Fellow of the Trilateral Commission. She was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Next Generation Fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
Derek Chollet is executive vice president and senior advisor for security and defense policy at The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). He is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy, where he coedits “Shadow Government,” and is a regular contributor to Defense One. He is also an advisor to Beacon Global Strategies, an adjunct senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, and a visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House.
From 2012-2015, Chollet was the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, where he managed U.S. defense policy toward Europe (including NATO), the Middle East, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere. In that role, he was a senior advisor to two secretaries of defense, Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel.
Prior to joining the Pentagon, Chollet served at the White House as special assistant to the president and senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council Staff. From 2009 to 2011, he was the principal deputy director of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Policy Planning Staff. From November 2008 to January 2009, he was a member of the Obama-Biden presidential transition team.
During the Clinton Administration, Chollet served as chief speechwriter for UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and as special adviser to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. From 2002 to 2004, Chollet was foreign policy adviser to U.S. Senator John Edwards (D-NC), both on his legislative staff and during the 2004 Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign.
Chollet has been a fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the American Academy in Berlin. He has been a visiting scholar and adjunct professor at The George Washington University and an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University. He also assisted former Secretaries of State James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher, as well as Holbrooke and Talbott, with the research and writing of their memoirs.
Chollet is author, co-author, or co-editor of seven books on U.S. foreign policy, including The Long Game: How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America’s Role in the World (PublicAffairs, 2016), America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11, co-authored with James Goldgeier (PublicAffairs, 2008), and The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World, co-edited with Samantha Power (PublicAffairs, 2011), and his commentaries and reviews on U.S. foreign policy and politics have appeared in many other books and publications.
He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the U.S. Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the U.S. Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service, the U.S. State Department Superior Honor Award, the Latvia Minister of Defense Medal of Honorary Recognition, and the Lithuania Minister of Defense Medal of Merit.
Rachel was a research trainee with the Alliance for Securing Democracy during summer 2022. Rachel received her BS in National Security at the University of New Haven and is currently completing her MA in European and Eurasian Studies focused on International Security Policy at George Washington University. She previously interned for Key Bridge Strategies, a consulting firm in Washington, DC, where she worked on Russian and Chinese intervention in the Arctic and outer space.
Gideon Cohn-Postar is the legislative manager at Issue One. Prior to joining Issue One, he served as a policy advisor to Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, focusing on voting rights, gun violence, and immigration issues. He has also worked for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Philadelphia Committee of Seventy. Gideon earned his PhD in American History from Northwestern University with a focus on voter intimidation and election reform in the 19th Century. He greatly enjoys teaching and writing about the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Zack Cooper was co-director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a senior fellow at The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). He also serves as a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies U.S. defense strategy and alliances in Asia. In addition, Zack is an adjunct assistant professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, an associate at Armitage International, and a member of the board of advisors of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Zack served in the Pentagon and White House under the George W. Bush administration, first as special assistant to the principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy and then as assistant to the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism at the National Security Council. He has also been the senior fellow for Asian security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Dr. Cooper received his Ph.D., M.A., and M.P.A. from Princeton University and B.A. from Stanford University.
Sudha David-Wilp is a senior transatlantic fellow and deputy director of the Berlin office. She joined GMF’s Berlin office in September 2011. She oversees GMF’s Congress-Bundestag Forum, a joint program with the Robert Bosch Foundation, and engages with the media as an expert on German–U.S. relations, and covers transatlantic digital topics.
Before moving to Berlin, she was the director of international programs at the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress in Washington, DC for nearly eight years. At the Association, David-Wilp was responsible for congressional study groups and international programs for current members of Congress and senior congressional staff. She established a trilateral roundtable format for legislators and launched a speakers’ program involving current and former lawmakers.
She received her bachelor’s from Johns Hopkins University, with a major in international relations and a minor in writing seminars. She received her master’s in international relations from Columbia University.
Larissa Doroshenko is an open-source intelligence analyst at the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund. An expert in state-sponsored information campaigns, she detects and analyzes foreign information manipulation and interference using ASD tools and other computational methods.
Prior to joining ASD, Larissa taught and conducted research at Northeastern University’s Communication Studies Department and the Network Science Institute. Her projects examined the use of new media for information campaigns and sought ways to mitigate their influence through early detection and grassroot activism. Larissa’s research about political campaigning and citizens’ online engagement in Ukraine received support from the Open Society Foundation and appeared in leading academic journals and edited volumes.
Larissa received her bachelor’s in journalism from Belarusian State University, her master’s in media and communications from Mid Sweden University, and her doctorate in political communication with a minor in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to English, Larissa is fluent in her native Belarusian, Russian, Polish, and has a working knowledge of French.
Ambassador Norman Eisen (ret.) is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings and an expert on law, ethics, and anti-corruption. He most recently served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020, including for the impeachment and trial of President Trump, and was a “critical force in building the case for impeachment” (Washington Post). His book about his service, A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump (Crown 2020), was praised as “tantalizing” (New York Times), “compelling,” (Washington Post), and as “an important piece of the historical record” (Mother Jones). Eisen is also the author of The Last Palace: Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House (Crown 2018) and Democracy’s Defenders: U.S. Embassy Prague, The Fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia, and Its Aftermath (Brookings Institution Press 2020).
At Brookings, Eisen has authored such reports as “The Emoluments Clause,” “Presidential Obstruction of Justice,” and “The Democracy Playbook." He is the project chair of Leveraging Transparency to Reduce Corruption, a research initiative pioneering best practices in transparency and accountability to fight corruption in the natural resource value chain. He also co-chairs the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group. He has written extensively on the economic and governance aspects of the pandemic response and has appeared before Congress on that and related subjects.
Eisen served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014. He helped develop innovative anti-corruption and transparency strategies in cooperation with U.S. and Czech law enforcement and other stakeholders. Eisen also helped advance U.S.-Czech security and defense initiatives and deepened economic ties between the two nations.
From January 2009 to January 2011, Eisen worked in the White House as special counsel and special assistant to the president for ethics and government reform. The press dubbed him “Mr. No” and the "Ethics Czar" for his tough anti-corruption approach. He was the White House Counsel Office lead on the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform and other aspects of the 2009 economic recovery, including advising on the stimulus and the rescues of the auto and finance industries. He also advised President Obama on lobbying regulation, campaign finance law, and open government issues, helping to assure the most scandal-free White House in modern history.
Before government service, Eisen was a partner in the D.C. law firm Zuckerman Spaeder LLP, where he specialized in litigation and investigations. His cases included Enron, the ADM antitrust case, the subprime financial collapse, the Monica Lewinsky matter, and the 2000 and 2004 presidential recounts. He was named one of DC’s top lawyers by Washingtonian. He currently provides pro bono legal representation through his law firm, Eisen PLLC.
Eisen received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1991 and his B.A. from Brown University in 1985, both with honors. He has been profiled in The Washington Post, New York Magazine, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, and Tablet. He was named to the Politico 50 list of thinkers shaping American politics, and to the Forward 50 list of American Jews. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Atlantic, Politico, and many other publications in the United States and internationally. He is the founder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, founder and current executive chair of the States United Democracy Center, and a CNN legal analyst. Eisen was credited by director Wes Anderson as an inspiration for the character of the crusading lawyer Deputy Kovacs in the 2014 film “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Outside of Brookings, Eisen is providing informal assistance exclusively to Rep. Karen Bass's campaign for mayor of Los Angeles.
Dr. Sophie Eisentraut was a transatlantic post-doctoral fellow at GMF in Washington, DC. She conducted research on the legitimacy and reform of international organizations, specifically on the challenges to effective multilateral cooperation that arise from the (re-)emergence of non-Western powers. Sophie was a transatlantic post-doctoral fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and a research associate at the Global Governance research unit at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. At the WZB, she was involved in the Contested World Orders project, which analyzed normative differences and conflicts underlying the evolution of world order.
Sophie holds a PhD from Free University Berlin and was a visiting researcher at Cornell University.
Dr. Joerg Forbrig is a senior transatlantic fellow for Central and Eastern Europe, and director of the Fund for Belarus Democracy. Based in GMF's office in Berlin, he leads the organization's efforts to assist civil society in Belarus, while his analytical and policy work focuses on Europe's East broadly, including the new member countries of the European Union and the EU's Eastern neighborhood.
Prior to joining GMF in 2002, Forbrig worked as a Robert Bosch Foundation fellow at the Center for International Relations in Warsaw, Poland.
He has been published widely on democracy, civil society, and Central and Eastern European affairs, including the books Reclaiming Democracy (2007), Prospects for Democracy in Belarus (2006), and Revisiting Youth Political Participation (2005). He is also a regular contributor to major international media, including op-eds in The New York Times, Financial Times, CNN, Politico, EU Observer, Neue Züricher Zeitung, and Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Forbrig has studied political science, sociology, and Eastern European affairs at universities in Germany, Poland, and Hungary. He holds a PhD in social and political sciences from the European University Institute in Florence and a master’s in political science from Central European University in Budapest. He speaks English, Russian, Polish, and Slovak in addition to his native German.
Hanna Foreman was a program assistant with the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). She oversees the creation of the weekly newsletter and assists with Congressional outreach and grant management. Prior to joining ASD, she participated in the Young Professionals Program through the East-West Center in Washington and conducted research on U.S.-Asia trade and security issues. She completed internships at the Office of Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, the U.S. Embassy in Dili, Timor-Leste, and the Clinton Foundation. She is a graduate of James Madison College at Michigan State University, where she studied international relations and Korean and wrote an honors thesis on Korean unification policy.
Amber Frankland was a research assistant with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund. Her research focuses primarily on Russia and information operations, and she contributes to weekly reporting on Russia, China, and Iran’s state media and diplomat activity collected on the Hamilton 2.0 dashboard. Some of her recent reports have covered covid-19 vaccine information operations and Russia’s evolving information manipulation playbook. Prior to joining ASD, Amber completed internships with the CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program, GMF, the U.S. Department of State’s former consulate in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the Casper, Wyoming office of U.S. Senator John Barrasso.
She received her MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from Stanford University, where she wrote her capstone on the narratives surrounding alphabet changes in Kazakhstan. She has a BA in Russian and East European Studies and Linguistics from the University of Chicago. Amber speaks English and Russian and has also studied Kazakh.
Dipayan Ghosh, Ph.D. is co-director of the Digital Platforms & Democracy Project and Senior Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he conducts research on digital privacy, artificial intelligence, and civil rights. His research and writing have been cited and published widely, with recent analysis appearing in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Foreign Affairs, Harvard Business Review, Foreign Policy, Time, and CNN. He has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR and BBC. A computer scientist by training, Ghosh previously worked on global privacy and public policy issues at Facebook, where he led strategic efforts to address privacy and security issues at the company. Prior to Facebook, Ghosh was a technology and economic policy advisor in the Obama White House where he served across the Office of Science & Technology Policy and the National Economic Council. He focused on issues concerning big data’s impact on consumer privacy and the digital economy. He has also served as a public interest technology fellow at New America, a Washington-based public policy think tank. Ghosh received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering & computer science at Cornell University where he conducted research at the Wireless Intelligent Systems Lab, and completed post-doctoral work at University of California, Berkeley.
Caitlin Goldenberg was a program coordinator at the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund, where she manages the team's work on technology and geopolitics. Prior to joining ASD, she held internships at the UN Refugee Agency, where she managed individual asylum cases during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and in the US Department of State's Office of Russian Affairs, where she monitored Russian human rights abuses and misinformation campaigns.
A recent graduate of Brown University, Goldenberg holds a bachelor's degree in international and public affairs, and a certificate in data fluency. She focused her studies on Russian politics, humanitarian intervention, and cybersecurity. In 2022, Goldenberg studied in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan with the State Department's Critical Language Scholarship for Advanced Russian. She also speaks Spanish
Jenny Gurev was a Resident Junior Fellow with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, and a recipient of the Elbaz Post-Graduate Fellowship in Human Rights. Prior to joining GMF, Jenny served as the student manager for the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights. Previously, she served as an intern in the Office of Representative Doris Matsui working to support the Congresswoman’s work on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. She also worked as a Middle East peace process intern at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Jenny graduated with honors from Claremont McKenna College in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, and wrote her senior thesis on how the 2016 election shaped American Jewish politics.
Bradley Hanlon was a program manager and analyst with the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund. He specializes in authoritarian information operations and studies how democracies can build resilience to foreign interference—particularly in the information space. Brad recently helped lead and write two major ASD reports that outline a comprehensive strategy for the United States and its democratic allies to counter authoritarians in the information age and provide a framework for securing future U.S. elections based on the lessons learned from the 2020 election. Brad’s work has been published in outlets including The Hill and Lawfare, and he has provided expert commentary in both radio and podcast appearances. His work has been cited in numerous publications, including CNN, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal.
Previously, Brad served as a Brimley Congressional Fellow in the Office of Representative Elissa Slotkin, where he supported the Congresswoman’s work on the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees. Before that, he served as ASD’s first research assistant, during which time he conducted investigations exposing Russian and Iranian information operations. Prior to joining ASD, Brad consulted for the Institute for the Study of War on Russian activity in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly focusing on Russian private military contractors fighting in Syria. Earlier, he worked as a civilian research assistant at the U.S. National War College.
Brad graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2016 with a BA in history and international and area studies and a minor in Russian and East European studies. Brad studied Russian at the University of Pittsburgh and at the International University in Moscow and earned his MA in security policy studies from the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
Hong-Cheng Hsiao is a trainee at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He assists on ASD’s projects related to East Asia, conducts literature reviews, and carries out case analyses. Before joining GMF, he worked for the Taiwan Digital Diplomacy Association as a project manager. Hong-Cheng is a strong advocate of the importance of digital and cyber diplomacy to civil society, and for promoting cyber awareness, securing democratic countries, and strengthening diplomatic relationships.
Hong-Cheng is pursuing a master’s of science in international relations and diplomacy at Leiden University in the Netherlands. His research interests focus on cross-cultural interaction, non-western diplomacy, and regional security in Asia. He received his bachelor’s in political science with a minor in German from Soochow University in Taiwan. Hong-Cheng is also a social media intern for the Hague Journal of Diplomacy.
Kevin Johnson is co-founder and executive director of Election Reformers Network (ERN). Kevin directs ERN’s research and advocacy programs focused on impartial election administration, independent redistricting, and electoral college reform. Kevin has more than 20 years’ experience in election reform, including seven years overseas with the National Democratic Institute and ten years on the Board of Common Cause Massachusetts.
Kevin is also a member of the Election Expert Study Team of The Carter Center, assisting the Center’s U.S. Elections Program. Kevin serves on advisory bodies of American Promise, and Rank The Vote.
Kevin co-authored the first comprehensive study of secretary of state conflict of interest and pioneered the top-two proportional approach to electoral college reform and the nominating commission approach to secretary of state selection. He has published more than two dozen opeds on a wide range of reform topics in media outlets including The Washington Post, The Hill, Governing, Commonwealth Magazine, and The Daily Beast.
At the National Democratic Institute, Mr. Johnson directed election observations in the West Bank and Gaza, Indonesia, and several countries in Africa, and organized advisory consultations for constitution drafters in new democracies, among other programs. With Common Cause, Kevin led a successful anti – Citizens United ballot question campaign in the city of Newton, Massachusetts and helped organize citizen participation in the highly regarded 2011 Massachusetts redistricting process, among other efforts.
In 2002 Mr. Johnson co-founded Liberty Global Partners, an investment advisory firm focused on venture capital and private equity in emerging markets. At Liberty Global, he has led capital marketing initiatives that raised more than $6bn for investment funds targeting China, India, Brazil, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia. Mr. Johnson has an MBA from Wharton and a BA in English Literature from Yale University.
Shanthi Kalathil is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy. She is also founder and principal at MDO Advisors, which helps organizations plan for geopolitical risk, and a senior fellow with the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. Under President Biden, Kalathil served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for Democracy and Human Rights at the National Security Council, where she oversaw the organization of the inaugural Summit for Democracy and the development of the first US Strategy on Countering Corruption, among other initiatives. Previously, she was the senior director of the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies, a leading think tank exploring such emerging challenges to democracy as digital authoritarianism, foreign interference, disinformation and kleptocracy. Throughout her career, she has focused on the intersection of technology, good governance, and international affairs, at organizations including the US Agency for International Development, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the World Bank. A former Hong Kong-based reporter for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Kalathil has authored and edited numerous policy and scholarly publications including Diplomacy, Development and Security in the Information Age (Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, 2013); Developing Independent Media as an Institution of Accountable Governance (The World Bank, 2011); and (with Taylor C. Boas) Open Networks, Closed Regimes: The Impact of the Internet on Authoritarian Rule (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2003), which was cited by Foreign Policy as one of “Ten Books To Learn How Technology Shapes the World”. She sits on the boards of Radio Free Asia and the National Democratic Institute and holds degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Nathan Kohlenberg was a research analyst at the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund, where he tracks authoritarian interference activities in the MENA region and provides research support to fellows on issues including election interference, digital surveillance, and information manipulation on social media, among others. He previously served as a policy associate at the Truman National Security Project, where he remains a fellow. He has written about disinformation and foreign election interference in Defense One, Salon, Just Security, and elsewhere.
Nathan received a BA from Carleton College in Minnesota and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he conducted research on the South China Sea conflict and contributed a chapter to South China Sea: Maintaining Peace/Preventing War, published by the JHU Press in 2017.
Dr. Maya Kornberg is a researcher on the Elections and Government Program, where she leads work related to information and disinformation in politics, Congress, and money in politics. She has worked on democratic governance issues at nonprofits, international organizations, think tanks, and academic institutions. She previously held positions at the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), NYU Govlab, and Public Agenda. Most recently, she led research for a UNDP and IPU project examining civic engagement in the work of over 80 parliaments around the world. She is lead author of the resulting Global Parliamentary Report.
Maya has taught undergraduate and graduate political science courses at NYU, Georgetown, and American University. Her commentary has appeared in the Washington Post, BBC, Scientific American, and other outlets. She is also the author of the forthcoming book Inside Congressional Committees: Function and Dysfunction in Lawmaking (Columbia University Press, February 2023.)
She holds a BA from Stanford University, an MPA from Columbia University, and a PhD in politics from Oxford University.
Katherine Mansted is a non-resident fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy and the senior adviser for public policy at The Australian National University’s National Security College. Katherine regularly writes and presents for Australian policy and national security professionals on the impact of technology on democracy, strategy, and international relations. She also co-hosts the "National Security Podcast" on policyforum.net, and she is a non-resident fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Previously, Katherine has worked as an adviser to a cabinet minister, a commercial solicitor, and law clerk in Australia’s High Court. She holds a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, where she studied as a General Sir John Monash Scholar, and Bachelors of Laws and International Relations from Bond University, where she graduated with the University Medal in Law.
Sophia McGrath is an International Security graduate student at the University of Denver. She was a research intern at ASD during the spring of 2022. She is a Fulbright research grantee selected to study the evolution of Turkish democracy for the 2022 - 2023 cycle. Prior to graduate school, Sophia worked in the Texas Senate as a bill analyst during the 87th Regular Session and on three campaigns during the 2020 election cycle.
Ronald Meinardus is a senior research fellow and head of the Mediterranean program at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. He is a political analyst and commentator. Brought up in Egypt and Greece by globetrotting parents, he has followed their paradigm. He earned his Ph.D. from Hamburg University with a thesis on Greece’s foreign policy vis-à-vis Turkey.
Meinardus started his professional career in journalism at Germany’s international broadcaster – first as economics’ producer, later as Head of Deutsche Welle’s legendary Greek radio program. A passion for liberal politics and advocacy took him to the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF) and assignments in Greece, South Korea, the Philippines, Egypt, India and Turkey. Apart from managing political projects in various parts of the world, writing commentary and analytical papers, Meinardus is a qualified facilitator and consultant focusing on strategic planning and political communications.
His current research interests center around Greek-Turkish issues, EU-Turkey relations, the role of Germany in the region and developments in the Arab world. More information and links to selected publications at www.meinardus.info.
David Metzger is a Research Trainee in GMF's Berlin office. His research focuses on foreign information manipulation efforts in Germany. David holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Regensburg and is currently completing a master’s degree in international relations in Berlin and Potsdam. Next to his native German, he speaks English, Spanish, and French.
Nash Miller is a research trainee at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund. Nash received his MA in European and Eurasian studies from George Washington University. His capstone paper, published in the Russian Analytical Digest, explored Russian information warfare operations in Poland and Ukraine. Nash has a BA in international relations from Brigham Young University. Prior to his work at ASD, Nash was manager at a non-profit focused on providing ophthalmological care in Africa and the Caribbean.
Thomas Morley was a research assistant with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at GMF. Prior to joining GMF, he worked as a consultant with Sayari Analytics. Earlier, he worked as a program assistant at Yale University European Studies Council’s Russian Studies Program. He graduated from Tufts University in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in political science and Russian and Eastern European Studies. He studied Russian at Tufts University and at Saint Petersburg State University in Saint Petersburg. He received his master’s degree in European and Russian Studies from Yale University in May 2016. He speaks English and Russian fluently, and has a working knowledge of German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, and Swedish.
Isabela Motta served as the Communications Intern at the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund, where she collaborated with the External Affairs Team to expand ASD's media content, audience, and relations. During her time with ASD, her research included analyzing the media campaigns of 2022 midterm candidates to track election narratives, and examining how Russian messaging campaigns target Spanish-speakers worldwide.
Isabela has served in a handful of communications roles, from editing, to coordinating a blog, to launching her own. She has studied the Spanish language and culture for more than seven years, but became interested in politics after she co-founded and worked on a road safety campaign in high school that wrote, drafted, and passed a state law.
She is entering her third year in undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia, where she is pursuing a B.A. in Spanish and a B.A in Leadership & Public Policy. While considering a graduate degree, she hopes to pursue more opportunities to work at the nexus of the Spanish language, national security, international relations, and disinformation.
Rylie studied international affairs and political science, with a concentration in European and Eurasian affairs, at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She has worked previously at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, and has held internships in Europe and South America. Her research interests include democratic decline, disinformation, and the transatlantic relationship. At the Alliance for Securing Democracy, she assists the Communication Team as a Communications Intern.
President of the Local Branch of the European Law Students Association ELSA (2018), graduate of the EU Delegation's project to Ukraine "EuStudyDays" (2019) and the Program of Professional and Personal Development among Youth "State Builder" (2020), member of the working group on participatory budgeting ("Participatory Budget") of the Poltava City Territorial Community for 2021-22. An active participant in trainings and courses for analysts.
Vassilis Ntousas is the senior manager and fellow for Europe for the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund. His research interests lie in European foreign policy and the European Union’s global engagement.
Prior to joining the ASD, he was the Senior International Relations Policy Advisor at the Foundation for European Progressive Studies in Brussels, where he led the foundation’s global research, advocacy, and strategic convening work. In 2019–2020, he held the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Academy fellowship at Chatham House, where he remains an Academy Associate with the institute’s Europe program. He is the author of several policy papers and regularly comments on global affairs for international media outlets. He is also the co-editor of two books published by Routledge, The European Union and China’s Belt and Road: Impact, Engagement and Competition (2021) and EU Climate Diplomacy: Politics, Law and Negotiations (2018). Ntousas holds an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics and a BA in International Relations and Politics from the University of Sheffield. He speaks English and Greek.
Mary N. Ogbuehi was a research intern at the Alliance for Securing Democracy during the fall of 2021. She is a master’s graduate from the International Peace & Conflict Resolution Program at Arcadia University. She focused her education on post World War II history and authoritarian regimes in South and Northeast Asia. Additionally, Mary has participated in human rights research projects on North Korean refugee resettlement programs in South Korea and the United States. During the summer of 2019, she was involved in an educational opportunity to study North Korean international affairs, and the ever- changing political arena in North East Asia at Ewha Women’s University. Her long-term goals include speaking Korean at an advanced level and advancing easy access to safe and accurate history and information.
Aviv Ovadya was a non-resident fellow at GMF’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. His work is focused on ensuring that technology enables a positive future and can support democratic discourse. Aviv received his B.S. and M.Eng degrees in computer science at MIT, and worked and consulted in Silicon Valley before becoming the founding Chief Technologist at the Center for Social Media Responsibility at the University of Michigan. He has been involved in raising the alarm about online and AI driven misinformation from before the 2016 US election, and his efforts have been covered by major news organizations across five continents. In his other efforts to improve our information ecosystem, Aviv was also founding member of the Credibility Coalition, consulted for Snopes, and was a Knight New Innovation Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.
Tamari Ramishvili is a program assistant with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at GMF, where she supports the initiative’s overall work. Before joining GMF, Tamari worked at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, managing projects on Georgia and Ukraine. She is also affiliated with the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program since 2015. Tamari speaks Georgian and holds a master’s degree in public policy from American University and a bachelor’s degree in political science and philosophy from Rutgers University.
Caitlyn studied Russian, Arabic, and Persian at the University of St Andrews, graduating in 2016. After living and working in Asia, she returned to Europe to pursue a Master's Degree. While studying peace, security, and strategy at Vesalius College, she served as the ASD trainee in Brussels, finishing her traineeship and graduating magna cum laude at the end of 2020.
Christina Revilla Chacon was a program assistant with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund. Prior to joining GMF, she worked as a policy fellow at RespectAbility, researching labor and education policy for people with disabilities. Earlier, she worked as a research assistant for MP Rosie Duffield in the UK House of Commons. She also dedicated her time to serving U.S. Congressman Stephen F. Lynch as an intern in his DC office. Christina graduated from the Catholic University of America with a bachelor’s degree in Politics with concentrations in both American Government and International Relations. She is fluent in English and Spanish and has a working knowledge of French.
Miriam Roday was a program assistant with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). Prior to joining GMF, Miriam worked at the Hoover Institution for former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice researching a range of national security issues related to cyberspace, China and Russian affairs. Earlier, she interned with the House Ways and Means and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committees. Miriam was also a member of the Senate Judiciary’s oversight team investigating Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. She graduated from Bard College with a bachelor’s degree in Global and International Studies, and wrote her senior thesis on Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election.
Louis Savoia is a program coordinator for the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund. He serves as the lead author and editor of ASD's weekly newsletter, the Securing Democracy Dispatch, and supervises ASD's Washington, DC-based trainees.
A graduate of American University’s School of International Service, Louis received a bachelor’s in international relations with focuses on US foreign policy/national security, European affairs, and international governance, and spent a semester in Brussels, Belgium. As part of his studies, Louis worked on a capstone project that investigated patterns of wrongful detention of US citizens abroad, which he and his research group presented to then-Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens and his team. Louis has a working knowledge of Italian and French.
Bret Schafer is a senior fellow and head of the Alliance for Securing Democracy's information manipulation team. Bret is the creator and manager of Hamilton 2.0, an online open-source dashboard tracking the outputs of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state media outlets, diplomats, and government officials. As an expert in computational propaganda, state-backed information operations, and tech regulation, he has spoken at conferences around the globe and advised numerous governments and international organizations. His research has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, and he has been interviewed on NPR, MSNBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and the BBC. Prior to joining GMF, he spent more than ten years in the television and film industry, including stints at Cartoon Network and as a freelance writer for Warner Brothers. He also worked in Budapest as a radio host and in Berlin as a semi-professional baseball player in Germany’s Bundesliga. He has a BS in communications with a major in radio/television/film from Northwestern University, and a master’s in public diplomacy from the University of Southern California, where he was the editor-in-chief of Public Diplomacy Magazine.
Matt Schrader was a China Analyst with the Alliance for Securing Democracy at GMF. Prior to joining GMF he was the editor of the Jamestown China Brief at the Jamestown Foundation. He worked previously at the Crumpton Group and the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington DC, prior to which he lived in Beijing for nine years, working in the finance, PR, and social enterprise spaces. Matt speaks, reads, and writes Mandarin Chinese fluently, has translated three books from Mandarin to English, and also speaks pretty decent Spanish. He holds a master’s degree from the Asian Studies program at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service and undergraduate degrees in international affairs and economics from The George Washington University.
Krystyna (Krysia) Sikora is a research analyst for the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund, where she supports research on election integrity and information manipulation. Her writing has been published in the EU Observer, Euractiv, and the Fulcrum.
Prior to joining ASD, Krysia received an MA in Eurasian, Russian, and East European studies from Georgetown University. Her studies centered on right-wing populism, disinformation, and democratic decline in Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on Poland. Krysia played professional soccer in Poland for two years and has a BA in political science and a certificate in policy journalism and media studies from Duke University.
Dr. Annika Silva-Leander is Head of North America Outreach and Analysis at International IDEA where she oversees International IDEA’s outreach in the region. As an opinion-builder on democracy and as lead author of International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy report from 2018 to 2021, she also contributes to the global democracy debate through her analysis and speaking engagements on the state of democracy globally.
Between 2018 and 2021, Silva-Leander was the Head of the Democracy Assessment Unit in Stockholm, where she led International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy report, as lead author, editor and Programme head. She also oversaw the production of the annually updated Global State of Democracy Indices and the implementation of the Covid-19 Global Monitor on Democracy and Human Rights. From 2015 to 2018, she worked as the Senior Adviser to the Secretary-General of International IDEA.
Prior to joining International IDEA, Silva-Leander worked for 10 years as a Social Development Specialist at the World Bank, on civic engagement and poverty reduction in Asia, Latin America and Africa. During her nine years in Asia, she worked for the World Bank, UNICEF and UNDP. She started her career at the AVINA Foundation in Costa Rica, managing grants to civil society organizations in Latin America.
Annika holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science and is Swedish-Chilean.
Austin Slater was the Press Officer for the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States where he leads communication efforts that bring attention to autocratic efforts to undermine democratic institutions. Slater also works to position ASD and its experts as thought-leaders in the democratic space to domestic and global audiences.
Slater has a history of leading 360-degree communications efforts. Prior to joining ASD at GMF, he led communications for the N7 Initiative at the Atlantic Council where he positioned the initiative as a thought-leader and convener for Arab-Israeli peace dialogue in the wake of the Abraham Accords signed in 2020. Before moving to Washington, Slater led communications for the workforce development nonprofit, Be Pro Be Proud, as it grew throughout the southeastern United States, using virtual reality and augmented reality to introduce students to various technical career paths facing workforce shortages in Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
Slater received his master’s degree from the Clinton School of Public Service where he focused his research on increasing civic engagement via digital literacy. Outside the office, Slater is a diehard Arkansas Razorbacks and Boston Red Sox fan and spends as much time as possible enjoying the outdoors
Etienne Soula is a research analyst with the Alliance for Securing Democracy based in Brussels. His research focuses on how the PRC resorts to information manipulation, economic coercion, and tech exports to weaken democracies, in the EU, US, and their allies, and to disseminate its model of techno authoritarianism globally. Etienne maintains ASD’s authoritarian interference tracker that covers over 600 incidents of Russian and Chinese political and economic interference in Europe and North America. He also monitors and reports on Chinese diplomatic and state-media messaging. Etienne previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Hudson Institute, and NATO. He holds a dual master’s in international affairs from American University and the Université Libre de Bruxelles, as well as a law degree from the University of Nottingham.
Dr. Ariane M. Tabatabai was the Middle East Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and an adjunct senior research scholar at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She is also a Truman national security fellow and a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) term member. Prior to joining GMF, Tabatabai served as an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation, the director of curriculum and a visiting assistant professor of security studies at the Georgetown University Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, and an international civilian consultant for NATO. Previously, Tabatabai was a post-doctoral fellow in the International Security Program and a Stanton nuclear security fellow in the International Security Program and the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs where she was also an associate. She is the author of No Conquest, No Defeat — Iran’s National Security Strategy (Oxford University Press) and the co-author of Triple Axis: Iran's Relations With Russia and China (I.B.Tauris). She has published widely in academic, policy, and mainstream outlets, including International Security, the Journal of Strategic Studies, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy. Tabatabai holds a Ph.D. in war studies from King's College London and is a native French and Persian speaker.
Daniel Tincu is a trainee at the Alliance for Securing Democracy in GMF's Brussels office. His work mainly focuses on EU affairs with an emphasis on disinformation and digital transition. He is also a PhD candidate, specializing in political theory and international relations. In 2016, he graduated with a master’s degree in international development, democratization, and European affairs.
Clara Tsao was a non-resident fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy. She is an online disinformation expert and a civic tech entrepreneur, who recently co-founded the Trust & Safety Professional Association and the Trust & Safety Foundation to support the global community of professionals who develop and enforce principles and policies that define acceptable behavior and content online. Clara is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. Her previous roles include CTO at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Foreign Influence Task Force and the interagency U.S. Countering Violent Extremism Task Force and Senior Advisor for Emerging Technology at the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency. She has spent a decade working in the technology industry across global teams at Microsoft, Apple, Sony PlayStation, AT&T, and also as a Google and Mozilla Technology Policy Fellow. Clara is also the Board Chair and President of the White House Presidential Innovation Fellows Foundation and a Senior Advisor at Tech Against Terrorism.
Daniel Twining was counselor and director of the Asia Program at The German Marshall Fund of the United States, based in Washington, DC, until August 2017. As counselor, he served on the executive management team that governs GMF’s $35 million annual operations in research, convening, leadership development, and grantmaking. As director of the Asia Program, he led a 15-member team working on the rise of Asia and its implications for the West through a program of convening and research spanning East, South, and Southeast Asia. Twining previously served as a member of the U.S. secretary of state’s Policy Planning Staff, as the foreign policy advisor to U.S. Senator John McCain, and as a staff member of the U.S. Trade Representative. He is an associate of the U.S. National Intelligence Council, has taught at Georgetown University, and served as a military instructor associated with the Naval Postgraduate School. He holds a BA with highest distinction from the University of Virginia and MPhil & DPhil degrees from Oxford University, where he was the Fulbright/Oxford Scholar from 2004-07. He writes regular columns for Nikkei and Foreign Policy and has served as an advisor to six presidential campaigns.
Heidi Tworek is assistant professor of international history at the University of British Columbia, a visiting fellow at the Center for History and Economics at Harvard University, and a non-resident fellow at The German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. She is working with the Alliance for Securing Democracy project at GMF on issues related to media. Tworek is the author or co-editor of three books forthcoming in 2018 on the history of news, business, and international organizations. Tworek has published in academic venues including Journal of Policy History, Business History Review, International Journal of Communication, Journal of Global History, Journalism Studies, and German History. She has also published in newspapers and magazines including Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Politico, Wired, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. She previously held the position of assistant director of undergraduate studies and lecturer on history in the History Department at Harvard University. Tworek has held visiting fellowships at Birkbeck, University of London and the Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam, Germany. She was a fellow at the Transatlantic Academy at GMF in 2016–17. Tworek received her BA (Hons) in modern and medieval languages from the University of Cambridge and earned her PhD in history from Harvard University.
Filip Vojvodic Medic is deputy director for GMF's Transatlantic Leadership Initiatives in Washington DC, where he designs, develops, and implements leadership development programs to foster transatlantic relations and expand transatlantic cooperation. His expertise includes exchange programs, social entrepreneurship, and seed funding, which he applies across a range of initiatives, including the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, the Transatlantic Leadership Seminar, and the Marshall Seminar.
Previously, Medic served as a program officer with GMF’s Balkan Trust for Democracy, where he worked on leadership initiatives and civil society development in the Balkans. He also worked as an assistant manager at Red Art Workshop, a radio, television, and web production company. Medic holds a degree in history and politics from the University of Adelaide, Australia. He is an expert on the Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe, and Europe’s Eastern Neighborhood.
Clint Watts is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Non-Resident Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy. He is also a national security contributor for NBC News and MSNBC. His research and writing focuses on terrorism, counterterrorism, social media influence and Russian disinformation. Clint’s tracking of terrorist foreign fighters allowed him to predict the rise of the Islamic State over al Qaeda in 2014. From 2014 – 2016, Clint worked with Andrew Weisburd and J.M. Berger to track and model the rise of Russian influence operations via social media leading up to the U.S. Presidential election of 2016. This research led Clint to testify before four different Senate committees in 2017 and 2018 regarding Russia’s information warfare campaign against the U.S. and the West. Clint’s writing has appeared in a range of publications to include the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Daily Beast, Politico, Lawfare, War On The Rocks and the Huffington Post. Before becoming a consultant, Clint served as a U.S. Army infantry officer, a FBI Special Agent, as the Executive Officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (CTC), as a consultant to the FBI’s Counter Terrorism Division (CTD) and National Security Branch (NSB), and as an analyst supporting the U.S. Intelligence Community and U.S. Special Operations Command.
Andrew Weisburd is a non-resident fellow for the Alliance for Securing Democracy at GMF. For the last 15 years, he has provided training and expert services to elements of the U.S. intelligence community and select non-governmental organizations. His areas of expertise include leveraging open sources of intelligence, and the use of the public internet by a broad range of threat actors, to further counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and criminal investigations. Weisburd has a BS degree in Information systems management from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a masters in criminology from the University of Illinois Chicago.
Dylan Welch was the China technology analyst at the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund. As a member of ASD’s technology and geopolitics team, he works on exposing and contesting China’s global technology influence, including from AI and digital infrastructure competition.
Welch was most recently at the Albright Stonebridge Group (ASG), where he interned with its China practice and focused on critical and emerging technology matters. Prior to ASG, he completed his master’s in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School with a thesis on US-China technology competition in space that was prepared in consultation with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Earlier in his career, Welch developed teaching curricula in Wuhan, China, and served as a budget analyst for the New York City Office of Management and Budget. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from New York University and is a recipient of the State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship in advanced Chinese.
Dr. Valerie Wirtschafter is a senior data analyst in the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies Initiative at the Brookings Institution. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2021. Her dissertation research focused on new media and violence in Brazil. Prior to her doctoral training, she worked as a researcher focused on Latin America at the Council on Foreign Relations and as a consultant focused on global health and development issues in Brazil.