Brussels Forum Session: Transatlantic Defense: Who Pays? Who Acts?
Nadia Calviño is the president of the European Investment Bank. She previously served as Spain's’ vice-president; minister for economy, trade and business; minister for economy and digitalization; and director general for competition. She also chaired the IMF’s International Monetary and Financial Committee and worked for 12 years at the European Commission where she was deputy director general for competition, deputy director general for financial services, and director general for the EU budget.
Calviño’s career in Spain encompassed various managerial positions as a civil servant at the Ministry for Economy, focusing on areas such as macroeconomic analysis and forecasting, foreign trade, and economic policy. In addition to her career in public service, she was an associate professor of economics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Calviño’s expertise and leadership have been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the US Foreign Policy Association Medal, the Women and Technology Award, and the Master of Digital award, which showcase her contributions to technological development and international cooperation. She holds a degree in economics from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and a law degree from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia.
Brussels Forum Session: Transatlantic Defense: Who Pays? Who Acts?
Radmila Shekerinska is NATO deputy secretary general. She was previously deputy prime minister and minister of defense of North Macedonia. She is the first woman to have served as her country’s minister of defense and the longest-serving in that post since North Macedonia's independence in 1991. She also served as a member of North Macedonia’s Parliament and is the only woman to have led any major political party in the country.
Shekerinska helped broker complex agreements, most notably the three that shaped North Macedonia’s democratic path: the Ohrid, Przhino, and Prespa agreements. She received the Commander of the National Order for Merit of France in 2018 for outstanding civic merit.
Shekerinska studied electrical engineering in Skopje and holds a master’s degree in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She has taught a course on EU structures and institutions at the University American College of Skopje.
Brussels Forum Session: Defense as a Driver of Innovation: Ideas from Taskforce Members and Friends
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann has been a member of the European Parliament since 2024. She was a member of the Bundestag for nearly seven years before then. During that time, she chaired the legislature’s Defense Committee.
Strack-Zimmermann has served as deputy federal chairwoman of the Free Democratic Party and chairwoman of the party’s parliamentary group. She was also mayor of Düsseldorf and, for nearly 20 years, a member of the city council. She worked for over 20 years as an independent representative for Tessloff, a book publisher.
Strack-Zimmermann holds a PhD from Ludwig-Maximillians-University in Munich.
Brussels Forum Session: Trade Wars and a New American Economic Order: Implications for Europe and the World?
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief for The New York Times. She covers the EU and much of northern Europe. She was previously a US economy reporter, having covered the Federal Reserve and macroeconomics for 12 years for Bloomberg and The New York Times. She is the author of “Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on A New Age of Crisis" about the changing role of the modern Fed and is set to publish another book on the history of economics in 2026.
Brussels Forum Session: Disruptions to Transatlantic Energy Security and Competitiveness
Ewa Krukowska is Brussels deputy bureau chief for Bloomberg News. She has been covering EU policies since 2009, with a focus on energy and climate. She previously worked for Bloomberg in Warsaw, reporting on foreign exchange and bond markets in emerging economies. Prior to that, she was a Reuters correspondent in Poland from 1998 to 2007, covering economics, politics, and stock markets.
Krukowska is also a visiting lecturer at the College of Europe in Natolin, where she teaches a workshop on communicating the green transition.
Brussels Forum Session: Grading Made in China 2025: Did Beijing’s Industrial Tech Strategy Deliver?
Jörg Wuttke is a Washington, DC-based partner at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group and a founding member of DGA Group.
Prior to joining the firm in mid-2024, Wuttke served for 27 years as the chief representative of BASF in Beijing, where he was responsible for guiding the company’s investment strategies for China, negotiating large projects, and leading the company’s government relations. Before BASF, he worked for 11 years with ABB, a multinational power and automation technologies company, on the development and financing of large projects in China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Russia.
During his time in China, Wuttke served on several boards and as a member of many professional associations, including as president of the EU Chamber of Commerce three times, most recently between 2019 and 2023. In June 2023, he joined the Robert Bosch Internationale Beteiligungen AG Verwaltungsrat (supervisory board). Since its founding in 2013, he has also been a member of the advisory board of Mercator Institute for China Studies, Germany’s foremost think tank on China.
Among other professional distinctions, Wuttke has been awarded the Order of Leopold II by King Albert II of Belgium, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur by President Emmanuel Macron of France, the Order of Italian Star by President Sergio Mattarella of Italy, and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany.