An internationally-recognized nongovernmental organization (NGO) leader, Pavol Demeš served from 2000-10 as director of GMF's Bratislava office, where he oversaw GMF's activities in Central and Eastern Europe. He now works in Bratislava as a transatlantic fellow.

Before joining GMF, Demeš was executive director of the Slovak Academic Information Agency-Service Center for the Third Sector, a Slovak NGO committed to enhancing civil society. Previously, Demeš led a distinguished political and civic reform career serving his country as foreign policy advisor to the president of Slovakia (1993-97), minister of international relations (1991-92), and director of the department of foreign relations in the ministry of education (1990-1991). In 1999 he was awarded a six-month public policy research fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. 

Astrid Ziebarth is senior fellow tech & society in the Berlin Office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She focuses on the question of how digitalization and emerging technologies impact society, with a special focus on migration and migration policy as well as on the future of work.

William McIlhenny is a visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He was formerly at the White House as a director at the National Security Council, and at the US Department of State as a senior policy advisor. He also served as a member of the secretary of state's policy planning staff. 

Alina Inayeh is currently a non-resident fellow. She joined GMF in 2007 as the director of the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation, a project dedicated to strengthening cooperation and fostering development in the Black Sea region. She is an active practitioner in the field of international development and democratization, having run the Freedom House office in Ukraine in 2004 and the NDI office in Russia in 2000-2003, with a focus on civic education and political processes. She has trained NGOs throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union on issues related to NGO development and democratization. She was a leading civic activist in the 1990s in Romania and an active promoter of the NGO sector in the country.

Sudha David-Wilp is the regional director of the Berlin office and a senior fellow. She joined GMF’s Berlin office in September 2011, where she oversees GMF’s outreach to the Bundestag and engages with the media as an expert on relations between Germany and the United States.

Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff is the Guido Goldman Distinguished Scholar for Geostrategy, based in GMF’s Berlin office, which he led for five years. With an earlier stint at GMF in Washington, DC, he has served on the organization’s executive team for a decade. 

Between 2013 and 2017, Kleine-Brockhoff served as an advisor to German President Joachim Gauck, overseeing policy planning and speechwriting. He started his career as a journalist with DIE ZEIT, Germany’s intellectual weekly, and became its Washington bureau chief. 

Dr. Minxin Pei joined GMF as a visiting senior fellow for Indo-Pacific in 2012. As part of the Indo-Pacific team, Pei advances GMF’s work on the implications of China’s rise for the West and supports the Stockholm China Forum.

In addition to his work with GMF, Pei is the Tom and Margot Pritzker Professor of Government and director of the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College. He is the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 1994) and China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Harvard University Press, 2006). His research has focused on democratization, China’s political development, the Chinese Communist Party, U.S.–China relations, and Chinese foreign policy. Pei is a columnist for L’Espresso and the Indian Express, and a regular contributor to The Diplomat. He has written for the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek International, and the International Herald Tribune. He received his PhD in political science from Harvard University.