Media

Mizumi Dutcher is a resident fellow in GMF’s Asia program. She concurrently serves as an American Political Science Association–Sasakawa Peace Foundation Congressional Fellow (2023–2024).

Dutcher joined GMF from the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University, where she researched, as a visiting fellow, the war between Ukraine and Russia and its implications for Taiwan. She also studied Taiwan's advanced semiconductor factories to determine its ability to serve as a “silicon shield” against Chinese aggression.

Dutcher was previously the Washington, DC bureau chief for Fuji Television, where she helped cover export controls on China and the 2020 US presidential election. She was also a Beijing-based correspondent for the network.

Mizumi holds a bachelor’s degree in Chinese studies from Kyoto University of Foreign Studies. She is pursuing a master’s degree in international public policy from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where she researches interference in Taiwan's 2024 general election. She speaks Japanese and Mandarin.

Joanna Krawczyk is GMF Geostrategy East’s deputy managing director. She has more than 15 years’ experience in project management, media development, and philanthropy in the EU. 

Krawczyk previously worked as head of news partnerships at Gazeta Wyborcza, the Polish daily, and as the first president of the Gazeta Wyborcza Foundation. In the latter role, she oversaw the Ukrainian Media Fund, which provides financial support to Ukrainian media and journalists; Poland’s first investigative reporting grant scheme for regional journalists; and a development program for local media. Under her leadership, the foundation won the World Association of News Publishers’ Golden Pen of Freedom Award for “standing as a beacon of independence and as a bulwark against authoritarianism”. 

As senior vice president of democracy at GMF, Laura Thornton leads teams whose programs defend and promote democracy. She oversees the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), through which GMF tracks and analyzes malign internal and external influence operations that target democracies worldwide and builds strategies to thwart them. Thornton also oversees GMF’s transatlantic trusts, which support civil society organizations and actors in Central and Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans, the Black Sea and Eurasia regions, Belarus, and Ukraine. The trusts bolster democratic resilience through civic education, media literacy, election monitoring, public awareness campaigns, and media and watchdog activities.

Thornton guides GMF’s global democracy initiatives to build communities of practices, share lessons, and forge transnational alliances on democratic innovation. Her research and analysis focus on authoritarianism, far-right illiberal movements, and democratic decline. She participates in numerous democracy networks and working groups as a leader and expert.