Polish

Philip Bednarczyk is GMF's Warsaw Office Director. He joined the organization after serving as the senior Europe adviser on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee and staff director for the House Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats for then-Ranking Member Gregory Meeks. Prior to that, he was a Bosch Foundation fellow in Germany. He also worked for an American NGO in Moscow, and for the EU in Brussels and Tallinn.

A dual Polish-American citizen, Bednarczyk studied at Fordham University and received a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. 

Nedim Useinow is a program manager with the GMF Ukraine Cities Partnership initiative. He focuses on supporting the rebuilding and sustainable, innovative development of Ukraine’s cities.

Before joining GMF, Useinow served as a program officer at ARTICLE 19, where he managed projects on digital security and human rights. He also worked with the Jerzy Regulski Foundation in Support of Local Democracy, a Polish organization promoting self-governance, as an expert helping to share Poland’s experience in democratic transformation with Ukrainian cities. At TechSoup, he led projects focused on digitizing public services at the municipal level in Ukraine. Earlier, at Solidarity Fund PL, he was part of the team coordinating a grant program supporting Ukraine’s decentralization reforms.

Useinow studied political science and cultural studies at the University of Gdańsk and the University of Warsaw. He has been a guest lecturer and the author of several academic publications. He regularly appears in the media, providing commentary on political affairs, regional security, and local development.

Larissa Doroshenko is an open-source intelligence analyst on the information manipulation team at the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at GMF. As an expert in state-sponsored disinformation, she detects and analyzes foreign information manipulation and interference using ASD tools and other computational methods.

Prior to joining the GMF, Doroshenko taught and conducted research at Northeastern University’s communication studies department and the Network Science Institute. Her projects explored the use of new media for disinformation campaigns and sought ways to mitigate their influence through early detection and grassroots activism. Her research into political campaigning and citizens’ online engagement in Ukraine appeared in leading academic journals and edited volumes.

Doroshenko holds a PhD in political communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a master’s degree in media and communications from Mid Sweden University, and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Belarusian State University. In addition to English, she speaks fluent Belarusian, Russian, and Polish, and some French.

Oscar Luigi Guccione is a Warsaw-based program assistant with GMF East. He researches key policy developments in Central and Eastern European countries and organizes projects that further European and transatlantic cooperation. Before joining GMF, he worked for the European University Institute in Florence and in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe secretariat in Vienna. He was also an associate editor for Thomson Reuters in Gdansk. 

Guccione speaks fluent Italian and English, and has a good command of Polish and French.

Joanna Kopacka, as a senior program coordinator in GMF's Engaging Central Europe (ECE) initiative, is responsible for some of the key segments of all ECE programming. Her primary focus lies on Poland and strengthening the resilience of civil society within the region.

Yuliia Korotia is an office manager at the GMF Warsaw office.