Brussels Forum Sessions: 

• Night Owl: The Future of Russia—Potential Scenarios and Their Implications for International Security
• Turkey: What Now? What Next?

Sergey Lagodinsky is a German lawyer, author, and member of the European Parliament (Greens/EFA). He is chair of the European Parliament’s Delegation to the EU-Türkiye Joint Parliamentary Committee and the Greens/EFA spokesperson for EU-Türkiye and EU-Russia relations. He is also first vice-chair of the Committee on Legal Affairs and works for the Committee on Foreign Affairs as well as the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs. 

   

Dr. Lagodinsky studied law in Göttingen and public administration at Harvard University. From 2003 to 2008, he served as program director and later as consultant to the Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee. He then worked as a lawyer at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP. From 2012 until joining the European Parliament in 2019, he was director of the department Europe/North America of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Lagodinsky is a regular guest and commentator in numerous media outlets. 

Brussels Forum Session: Night Owl: The Future of Russia- Potential Scenarios and Their Implications for  International Security

Julia Ioffe is a founding partner and Washington correspondent at Puck News. Previously, Ioffe was a US politics, national security, and foreign policy reporter for The Atlantic. Prior to 2017, she was a contributing writer at Politico magazine, where she covered the 2016 election, a contributor at Huffington Post’s Highline, and a columnist at Foreign Policy. She was a senior editor at The New Republic from 2012 to 2014, and a Moscow-based correspondent for Foreign Policy and the New Yorker. Ioffe has twice been a finalist for the Livingston Award : for a 2013 profile of Senator Rand Paul and a 2011 piece on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. In 2009, she received a Fulbright scholarship to live and work in Russia. 

Brussels Forum Session: Opening Dinner: A Shared Cause, A Meal Shared—Voices from the Region

John Hewko is the general secretary and chief executive officer of Rotary International and The Rotary Foundation. 

Hewko previously served as vice president for operations and compact development for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a US government agency established in 2004 to deliver foreign assistance to the world’s poorest countries. At MCC, he completed the negotiation of assistance agreements totaling $6.3 billion to 18 countries for infrastructure, agriculture, water and sanitation, health, and education projects. 

Prior to joining MCC, Hewko was an international partner with the law firm Baker McKenzie, specializing in international corporate transactions in emerging markets. He helped establish the firm’s Moscow office and was the managing partner of its offices in Kyiv and Prague. 

While working in Ukraine in the early 1990s, Hewko assisted the working group that prepared the initial draft of the new Ukrainian post-Soviet constitution and was a charter member of the first Rotary club in Kyiv. 

Hewko has been a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University, and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has published papers and articles in leading US and international publications and has spoken extensively on political and business issues dealing with the former Soviet Union, Central Europe, Africa, and Latin America. He is also a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. 

Hewko holds a law degree from Harvard University, a master’s in modern history from Oxford University (where he studied as a Marshall Scholar), and a bachelor’s in government and Soviet studies from Hamilton College in New York. 

Brussels Forum Session: A Conversation on the Human Side of Rebuilding Ukraine: Voices From Civil Society

Mariya Heletiy serves as deputy chief of party for USAID’s five-year “Ukraine Civil Society Sectoral Support Activity”, which is implemented by a consortium of Ednannia, the Center for Democracy and Rule of Law (CEDEM), and the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research (UCIPR). Heletiy has more than 15 years of experience in international organizations, development projects, and public institutions (Ukrainian Parliament and Government). Since 2014, she has been working on improving the legal environment and strengthening organizational capacity for civil society organizations. She has coordinated various projects for protecting civil society in Ukraine. She also founded and managed the European Information and Research Center of the Verkhovna Rada (currently Research Service of the Parliament). She managed political process and elections projects at the USAID mission in Ukraine, and security projects at the Open Ukraine Foundation.

Heletiy earned her master's degree and PhD in international relations, focusing on conflicts in the Balkans and their resolution. She was also engaged in research assignments at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in New York and the University of California, Berkeley.

Brussels Forum Session: Night Owl: The Future of Russia—Potential Scenarios and Their Implications for International Security

Jamie Fly resumed leadership of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) as president and chief executive officer in 2021. He was first appointed to the role in 2019. Previously, Fly was a senior fellow and co-director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and director of the Future of Geopolitics and Asia programs at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He served as counselor for Foreign and National Security Affairs to Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) from 2013 to 2017, and as his foreign policy advisor during his presidential campaign. Prior to joining Senator Rubio’s staff, he was the executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative and served in the Bush administration at the National Security Council (2008–2009) and in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (2005–2008).

Fly’s articles and reviews have been published in a variety of outlets in the United States and Europe. For his work in the Department of Defense, he was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. Fly received a bachelor’s degree in international studies and political science from American University and a master’s degree in German and European studies from Georgetown University.

Brussels Forum Session: Building for the Future: A Green Marshall Plan for Ukraine

Fiona Harvey is a journalist who has covered the environment for the Financial Times and the Guardian. She has written extensively on environmental issues ranging from air pollution and biodiversity to ocean plastic and climate change. Her assignments have taken her to the Arctic and the Amazon, and she has attended nearly every United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties since 2004.  

Harvey has interviewed major world figures including António Guterres, Ban Ki-moon, Tony Blair, José Manuel Barroso, Noam Chomsky, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Sir David Attenborough. Among numerous awards and recognitions, she has won the Foreign Press Association award for Environment Story of the Year (twice), the British Environment and Media Awards Journalist of the Year, and in 2020, she was named one of the Woman’s Hour Power “Our Planet” List of 30 top UK women. 

Brussels Forum Session: The Odesa Debate Part I: The World’s Largest Construction Project: Private-Sector Stakes and Perspectives

Andy Hunder is president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, representing more than 600 US and international investors and corporate members. Hunder serves on the Supervisory Board of Ukraine’s Business Ombudsman Council, and is a member of the National Reform, National Investment, and Anti-Corruption Councils. 

Hunder served previously as treasurer of AmChams in Europe, the umbrella organization for American Chambers of Commerce in 43 countries throughout Europe, accounting for more than $1.1 trillion in investment on both sides of the Atlantic. He headed the public relations department at Ukrainian Mobile Communications (now Vodafone Ukraine) and subsequently was external affairs and communications director at GlaxoSmithKline with responsibility for Ukraine, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. 

From 2010 to 2015, Hunder served as director of the Ukrainian Institute in London, regularly providing analysis and commentary on Ukrainian current affairs on BBC, CNN, SKY, Bloomberg TV, ITV, Al Jazeera, and others. He has spoken on Ukrainian affairs at the UK Houses of Parliament, the House of Lords, Oxford University, the London School of Economics, and University College London. He has been a presenter on a leading Ukrainian television channel. He is also a fundraiser for the Ukrainian Catholic University. 

Brussels Forum Session: The Odesa Debate Part II: The World’s Largest Construction Project—Laying the Foundation at the London Donor Conference

Ali Velshi is an award-winning journalist, host of "Velshi" and Chief Correspondent for MSNBC, and a weekly economics contributor to NPR's "Here and Now". He has covered multiple US presidential elections and significant news stories around the globe, including reporting extensively from Ukraine and across Central and Eastern Europe during the Russian invasion, the Syrian refugee crisis from Turkey and Jordan, the Iran Nuclear Deal in Tehran, the Greek debt crisis in Athens, and the funeral of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. He previously worked as an anchor and correspondent for Al Jazeera America and CNN. 

Brussels Forum Session: The Odesa Debate Part II: The World’s Largest Construction Project: Laying the Foundation at the London Conference

Pierre Heilbronn is inspecteur general des finances. On 6 March 2023, President of the French Republic Emmanuel Macron appointed him France’s Special Envoy for Ukraine’s Relief and Reconstruction. 

Heilbronn joined the General Secretariat for European Affairs (SGAE) in 2007. In this capacity, he coordinated the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2008. He also played a decisive role in providing technical assistance to Greece in response to its public debt crisis. 

A committed European, he was first deputy head and then head of cabinet of the European Commissioner for External Relations and Trade (2009–10), rapporteur for the Commission for the Liberation of French Growth chaired by Jacques Attali (2010), deputy secretary general of the Secretariat General for European Affairs (2010–14), and advisor for European affairs in the Prime Minister’s office (2010–11), deputy director of the Cabinet of the Minister for the Economy and Finance (2014–16), and vice-president in charge of policies and partnerships at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (2016–21). Since 2021, he has been a visiting professor in practice at the London School of Economics and Political Science.  

Heilbronn is a graduate of SciencesPo and a former student of the École nationale d'administration (Copernicus class). He holds an MPhil in Economics from the University of Cambridge and an master’s degree in European Affairs from the College of Europe in Bruges.