French

Maria Florea oversees the Black Sea Trust’s (BST) Enhancing the Resilience of Civil Society in the Eastern Partnership project and BST’s grantmaking portfolio for the wider Black Sea region. 

Florea has extensive experience in leadership program design, having implemented GMF’s Leadership and Democracy Initiative for Eastern Europe, which focuses on Eastern Partnership countries. Over the course of her 10 years at GMF, she has helped hone the skills of more than 200 leaders and civil society activists, supported more than 100 organizations working to improve communities in the wider Black Sea region, and organized numerous events and large-scale forums. 

Florea holds a master’s degree in European governance from the University of Bristol and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Vienna. She is also a graduate of the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program. She speaks English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian, in addition to her native Romanian.

Etienne Soula is a Brussels-based research analyst with the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at GMF. His research focuses on Chinese information manipulation, economic coercion, and use of technology exports to weaken democracies and to disseminate globally its model of techno-authoritarianism. He maintains ASD’s authoritarian interference tracker that covers more than 600 incidents of Russian and Chinese political and economic interference in Europe and North America. He also monitors and reports on Chinese diplomatic and state-media messaging. 

Soula previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Hudson Institute, and NATO. He holds a dual master’s degree in international affairs from American University and the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and a law degree from the University of Nottingham.

Alberto Tagliapietra is Senior Program Coordinator at the Mediterranean Policy Program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) in Brussels. His research interests focus on EU policies, migration, and the intersection between technology and migration.

Alberto joined GMF in 2019. He holds a BA in international relations and an MSc in European and international studies from the University of Trento.

Gesine Weber is a fellow on GMF’s Geostrategy team, where she works on European security and defense issues. Based in Paris, she focuses on EU defense initiatives, security and defense policy of the E3 (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom), and Europe's role in the global order. 

During a 2024 fellowship at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, Weber led a research project on European balancing in the Indo-Pacific in the context of US-China competition. 

Prior to joining GMF, she worked as a defense policy adviser at the German parliament and as a consultant for the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation in Shanghai. Weber is pursuing a PhD in defense studies at King’s College London, where she is part of the European Foreign Policy Research Group and contributes to the work of the Centre for Grand Strategy. She is an associate researcher for the European Council on Foreign Relations and a nonresident Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the Notre Dame Center for International Security.

Weber holds a master’s degree in European affairs from Sciences Po in Paris and another master’s degree in political science from the Freie Universität Berlin. She studied Mandarin at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. Her writing and commentary appears regularly in English, French, and German in European and other international media, including the BBC, the Neue Züercher Zeitung, Politico, and France 24. 

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer is GMF’s president. In her previous capacity as senior vice president for geostrategy, she led GMF’s geostrategy policy and risk advisory initiatives across Europe, the United States, and the Indo-Pacific. Her areas of expertise encompass European affairs, transatlantic and international relations, and corporate diplomacy.

With more than 15 years’ experience in senior advisory and executive roles, de Hoop Scheffer advises governments, multinational corporations, and financial institutions on the political, geopolitical, and macroeconomic trends that shape their operations and strategies. She helps them develop early-warning systems and forward-looking decision-making processes.

De Hoop Scheffer serves as an independent board director on the Supervisory Board of Meridiam and the French Treasury Strategic Committee, among other bodies. She is also chair of the advisory board of the French Chief of Defense Staff and a member of the board of the France-Nederland Cultuurfonds, the advisory board of the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, and the editorial board of The Washington Quarterly. She is a member of the Trilateral Commission.

Prior to joining GMF in 2012 as its Paris office director and as a senior fellow, de Hoop Scheffer held key advisory positions in the French government, academia, and international organizations, including with the French foreign ministry’s policy planning staff (2009-2011), NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (2010-2013), the French Ministry of Defense (2006-2009), and UN peacekeeping operations (2006). She also served as an associate professor at Sciences Po Paris and as a research fellow at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales.

A dual French-Dutch citizen, de Hoop Scheffer holds a PhD in political science from Sciences Po Paris and is the author of “Hamlet en Irak”. She is a frequent public speaker and writer. 

Martin Quencez is managing director of geopolitical risk and strategy. Over the past ten years, he has held several positions at GMF, including as deputy director of the Paris office and research fellow in the Security and Defense program. His work includes research on transatlantic security and defense cooperation, and US and French foreign policy, on which he regularly writes for international media. He is a co-author of GMF’s annual flagship Transatlantic Trends report. 

Quencez is also an associate researcher for the European Council on Foreign Relations, working in France for its European Powers program. He has taught transatlantic relations at the Euro-American campus of Sciences Po and, prior to joining GMF, worked for the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, focusing on French and Indian strategic thinking. 

Quencez studied international relations at the Uppsala University and is a graduate of Sciences Po. He is completing a PhD in contemporary history at Sorbonne Nouvelle University. 

Jonas Parello-Plesner is a visiting fellow in GMF's Indo-Pacific program. His research focuses on Asia and China and relations with EU and the United States. Parello-Plesner has also worked at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) as a Senior Policy Fellow with a focus on European-Chinese relations.