Caucasus

Hanna Kovhan is a Berlin-based senior program coordinator with GMF’s Leadership Programs team. She supports the organization’s work on fellowship and alumni programs for leaders from the United States and Europe, including the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, the Policy Designers Network, the Leadership Lab, and the Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network. She previously led the Transatlantic Information Media Program and served as GMF’s liaison to the Bundeswehr for the Manfred Wörner Seminar.

Her regional areas of expertise encompass the Commonwealth of Independent States and the EU’s Eastern Partnership countries.

Kovhan holds a bachelor’s degree in translation studies from V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in Ukraine, a master’s degree in intercultural communication from European University Viadrina in Germany, and an executive diploma in the art of diplomacy from the European Academy of Diplomacy in Poland. She also spent a year studying international relations at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University in Georgia and a semester at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. 

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.

David Salvo is managing director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at GMF. 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.