Brussels Forum Session: Spotlight: A Response

Ivan Krastev is a political scientist, chairman of the board of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, and a permanent fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna (IWM Vienna). He is also the founder and member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the boards of the International Crisis Group and GLOBSEC. He regularly publishes articles in the Financial Times, The New York Times, and other international and Bulgarian media. 

Krastev’s latest books are: “Is it Tomorrow Yet? Paradoxes of the Pandemic”; “The Light that Failed”, co-authored with Stephen Holmes and winner of the Lionel Gelber Award for Best English Language Book on International Politics for 2020; “After Europe”; “Democracy Disrupted. The Global Politics on Protest”, and “In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders”. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.  

Krastev is the 2020 winner of the Jean Améry Award for European Essay Writing. 

Andris Sprūds is minister of defense of the Republic of Latvia, a position he has held since September 2023. He was previously a member of the Saeima (parliament) and chairperson of the Saeima European Affairs Committee. 
 
Sprūds is also a member of the advisory board and former director of the Latvian Institute of International Affairs, and concurrently holds the position of professor at Riga Stradins University. 
 
Sprūds has been a visiting student and scholar at Oxford, Uppsala, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins universities, as well as at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and Japan's Institute of Energy Economics. His research interests include energy security and policy in the Baltic Sea region, the domestic and foreign policy of post-Soviet countries, and transatlantic relations. 
 
Sprūds holds a master's degree in Central European history from the Central European University in Budapest, a master's degree in international relations from the University of Latvia, and a PhD in political science from Jagiellonian University in Kraków. 

Brussels Forum Session: Trust in Information in the Age of AI

Peter Pomerantsev is a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where he co-directs the Arena Initiative.

Previously, he was a senior fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he was the director of the Arena Initiative, a research project dedicated to overcoming the challenges of digital-era disinformation and polarization. His book on Russian propaganda, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, won the 2016 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and was nominated for the Samuel Johnson, Guardian First Book, Pushkin House, and Gordon Burns prizes. The work has been translated into over a dozen languages and was dramatized on BBC Radio 4. His new book, This is Not Propaganda, was released in August 2019,. It was a Times Book of the Year and has been shortlisted for the Gordon Burns Prize.

Pomarantsev  has testified on the challenges of information war and media development before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the UK Parliament Defense Select Committee. He was a specialist advisor on the UK Parliamentary Committee on Fake News, and was a member of USC Annenberg’s Transatlantic Working Group on Internet Content Moderation and Freedom of Expression. He is a columnist at The American Interest, and writes for publications including the New York Times, Granta, and The Atlantic. From 2002 to 2014, Pomarantsev  was a television producer on documentaries and factual entertainment programs for major networks including the Discovery Channel and the BBC. He continues to present and write radio documentaries for BBC Radio 4, most recently on disinformation about climate change.

Pomarantsev is frequently asked to host policy seminars at NATO, the EU, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the German Federal Foreign Office, and the US Department of State, as well as at numerous public events. He has helped write in-depth policy recommendations on counterpropaganda and media diversity for both national governments and NGOs, including the UK FCDO’s strategic communication policies for Russia and the western Balkans. He has led seminars and given talks on the subject of propaganda and media at universities including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton. He has been a fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. 

Brussels Forum Session: Security South: Transatlantic Strategy in a Time of Crisis

Stefano Sannino has served as secretary general of the European External Action Service (EEAS) of the EU since January 1, 2021. Previously, he held the post of deputy secretary general for economic and global Issues at the EEAS. Prior to that, he was Italy’s ambassador to Spain and Andorra and Italy’s permanent representative to the EU in Brussels.  

After a period at the Cabinet of the President of the Commission,  Sannino joined the Directorate General for External Relations (2004–2010) as director for crisis management and representative at PSC, then director for Latin America, and finally as deputy director general for Asia and Latin America . In 2010 he moved to the Directorate General for Enlargement as deputy director general and later as director general, a position he held until June 2013.    

Earlier in his career, Sannino served as the diplomatic advisor to the Italian prime minister and his personal representative to G8 summits. He has also held the position of ambassador and head of the OSCE Mission in Belgrade.  He has held several positions within the Italian Diplomatic Service: deputy head of mission of the Italian Embassy in Belgrade; head of the Secretariat of the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs;; and diplomatic advisor and head of the cabinet of the minister of foreign trade. Beyond his native Italian, Sannino is fluent in Spanish, English, and French.   

Jan Hoogmartens has been the chief of staff to the Belgian minister of foreign affairs, European affairs and foreign trade in Brussels since July 2023. A career diplomat, he was before that ambassador to China and Mongolia and ambassador to COREPER I and deputy permanent representative of Belgium to the EU. Other previous diplomatic assignments include another tour of duty at the Belgian Permanent Representation to the EU and one in Japan. Hoogmartens has also served as chief of staff to the Belgian minister of home affairs, deputy chief of staff to the foreign minister, and diplomatic advisor to the prime minister. Holder of a PhD (law) from the University of London and a master’s degree in laws from the University of Hong Kong and KU Leuven/Heidelberg University/University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Jan Hoogmartens is concurrently pursuing an active academic career in Belgium, the United States, and China and has authored several articles and books on EU trade law.  He is fluent in Dutch, French, English, and German.

Brussels Forum Session: Fresh Off the Campaign Trail: Stories From the 2024 US Primary

Olivia Perez-Cubas is a strategic communicator with more than 10 years of experience effectively messaging for corporations, politicians, and public policy initiatives. She is currently a managing director at Bullpen Strategy Group, advising on the public affairs needs of corporate and issue-advocacy clients in the energy, finance, and entertainment sectors. Most recently, she worked for Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign, where she operated as primary spokesperson and advised on strategic messaging.  

Perez-Cubas got her start in politics upon joining Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s communications team, serving as media director for his presidential campaign and communications director for his Senate office. Following her time on Capitol Hill, she spearheaded a press operation for the first SuperPAC dedicated solely to electing Republican women. Roll Call named her one of the top Latino staffers on Capitol Hill. Her career began as a news writer at WSVN, the FOX affiliate in Miami, Florida. She is a graduate of Florida State University. 

Brussels Forum Session: Eastern Flank in Front 

Radosław Sikorski has served as Poland’s minister of foreign affairs since 2023. He held the same position previously (2007–2014). He has also served as Poland’s minister of defense (2005–2007), and speaker of the Sejm (2014–2015). From 2019 to 2023, he was a member of the European Parliament, sitting on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Security and Defence Subcommittee. He chaired the delegation for relations with the United States.

As Poland’s minister of foreign affairs, Sikorski launched, together with Carl Bildt, the EU’s Eastern Partnership. He also proposed and helped to establish the European Endowment for Democracy and the Solidarity Prize.

During the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity”, he headed an EU mission to Kyiv that ended the bloodshed on the Maidan.

Sikorski is a senior fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and has been listed among Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers for “speaking the truth, even when it is not diplomatic”.

From 2002 to 2005, Sikorski was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, and the executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative.

He served as a war correspondent in Afghanistan and Angola from 1986 to 1989.  

Sikorski is the author of several books, including Dust of the Saints: A Journey to Herat in Time of War, Full Circle: A Homecoming to Free Poland, The Polish House: An Intimate History of Poland, Poland Can Be Better: Behind the Scenes of Polish Diplomacy, and Poland: The State of the State. 

Brussels Forum Session: Euroatlantic Security Outside the Box: High Ambitions, Different Formats 

Benjamin Haddad was elected to the parliament of France in June 2022. He is a member of both the Foreign Affairs Committee and the European Affairs Committee, as well as spokesperson for the Renaissance Party parliamentary group.

He carried the bill concerning the "Prevention of the dissemination of terrorist content online" on July 19, 2022.

A graduate of Sciences Po Paris and HEC, Haddad is an expert in international relations. He has also taught international relations at Sciences Po.

From 2014 to 2018, he was a fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.

In February 2019, he was appointed senior director of the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council. In his work, he has argued for transatlantic unity in response to Russian aggression, greater European responsibility, and investment in strategic issues.

Haddad is the author of Le paradis perdu : L'Amérique de Trump et la fin des illusions européennes (Paradise Lost: Trump's America and the End of European Illusions) in 2019. In this book, he analyzes the historical and geopolitical forces that determined the transition from a long period of liberal optimism to an era of retrenchment in the US and Europe. 

Brussels Forum Session: NATO at 75: Past, Present, Future — Part I & II

Teri Schultz has been covering the EU, NATO, and the BeNeLux region since 2007, appearing regularly on National Public Radio, CBS Radio News, and Germany’s public broadcaster, Deutsche Welle. She has a particular interest in Afghanistan, having made six reporting trips there, and in Russia and the Nordic region, having lived and worked in Moscow and Helsinki.  

Schultz helps teach media literacy and counter-disinformation to schoolchildren with the Lie Detectors organization and has held journalism fellowships in Russia and Pakistan. She holds a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Helsinki and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from New Mexico State University.