Global Power Shifts

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. 

Emiliano Alessandri is a visiting senior fellow at GMF. He is also a senior adviser with the Agency for Peace Building and an associate fellow with the Middle East Institute. His expertise is in the field of international security and multilateral cooperation with a particular focus on transatlantic relations, European affairs, and the Mediterranean/Middle East North Africa.

Alessandri was a resident senior transatlantic fellow with GMF between 2010 and 2013, working primarily on Mediterranean affairs and Türkiye. He subsequently served three successive secretary generals of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe as a senior officer between 2013 and 2023. He also held positions with the International Center for Migration Policy Development, the Brookings Institution, and the Institute of International Affairs of Rome, and taught at the College of Europe and Central European University.

Alessandri holds a PhD in international history from the University of Cambridge and a master’s degree in international economics and US foreign policy from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). 

Kristine Berzina is the Washington, DC-based senior fellow, US defense and transatlantic security. She is responsible for leading programming on US, Nordic, Baltic, and Arctic security and defense issues, and provides analysis on NATO and US and European foreign policy.

Berzina also leads GMF’s Across America initiative, which takes European officials into the US heartland to build regional connections on security issues. She is a frequent commentator in international media, including The New York Times, the BBC, CNN, NPR, France 24, Deutsche Welle, and The New Yorker. She is a co-host of Drošinātājs (The Fuse), a Ukraine-focused podcast and Latvian radio program.

Berzina previously worked on countering autocratic influence as head of GMF’s Alliance for Securing Democracy’s geopolitics team and, while based in Brussels and Berlin for the organization, on transatlantic security and energy issues. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from Yale University and a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge.

Martin Quencez is a senior fellow and special advisor to the president. 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 Uppsala University and is a graduate of Sciences Po. He is completing a PhD in contemporary history at Sorbonne Nouvelle University. 

Markus Ziener is a professor of journalism at the Hochschule für Medien, Kommunikation und Wirtschaft (HMKW), University of Applied Sciences, in Berlin. He teaches political theories and economics, mass media, journalistic writing, and the history of the press. He is also the global affairs correspondent of the newspaper The Straits Times in Singapore and a regular contributor to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Deutschlandfunk/Deutschlandradio. Ziener is also a liaison lecturer at the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.

Between 2006 and 2012 Markus Ziener was Washington bureau chief of Handelsblatt, Germany's business daily. Prior to that he worked as a field reporter, covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has also served as Handelsblatt’s correspondent in Moscow (1994–1999) and Eastern Europe (1990–1994). From 1999 to 2001 he was foreign editor with the Financial Times Deutschland.

Originally from Darmstadt, Ziener obtained his Ph.D. in politics at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, examining financial crises and reforms in Poland. He also spent time at Duke University through a GMF fellowship for foreign journalists.