Ukraine Reconstruction

Hannah Abdullah is a senior fellow with the GMF Cities program. She leads its work on sustainable urban development and climate justice to support transatlantic exchange and learning for achieving an inclusive green transition. She regularly speaks and publishes on the role of cities in climate and environmental governance.

Before joining GMF, she was a senior research fellow for the Global Cities Program of the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs, where she led the organization’s research and other activities on urban climate action in close collaboration with Barcelona city council. She also served as a program officer for the New York office of the Goethe-Institut, Germany’s cultural agency, where she developed and managed programs on urbanization and architecture, among other areas.

Hannah Abdullah holds a master's degree and a PhD in sociology from the London School of Economics (LSE). She held research, teaching, and lecturing positions at LSE and at the University of Dresden, the University of Leipzig, and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

Brock D. Bierman is president and CEO of Ukraine Focus, a Washington, DC-based humanitarian organization committed to working directly with communities across Ukraine to meet urgent assistance needs through direct cooperation with Ukrainian local, state, and federal authorities.

Prior to helping found Ukraine Focus, Bierman established the Volunteer Ambulance Corps, Light Up Ukraine, and Playgrounds 4 Peace. These programs have helped delivered millions of dollars in humanitarian assistance to Ukraine since February 2022. Along with Ukraine Focus’ Rebuild project, they help thousands of Ukrainians defend their freedoms, rebuild their communities, and become more hopeful and resilient.

For his humanitarian contributions, Ukraine's Territorial Defense Force (TDF) awarded Bierman the Shield of the TDF of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and made him an honorary member.

Bierman has organized and led 13 missions to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, raised $2.5 million in cash and in-kind contributions to support Ukraine Focus programs in 2023 alone, and established key relationships and partnerships with international organizations such as Rotary International and the City of Albany, New York.

Bierman has served two presidents, most recently as the assistant administrator of the United States Agency for International Development's Bureau for Europe and Eurasia, and was confirmed by the US Senate by unanimous consent. Bierman also served three terms in the Rhode Island House of Representatives. A native of Rhode Island, Bierman received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Josh Rudolph is managing director and senior fellow of GMF’s Strategic Democracy Initiatives. He has two decades of high-level experience at the intersection of finance and national security across the US government, multilaterals, think tanks, academia, and Wall Street.

At GMF since 2019, Rudolph has launched several programming initiatives that elevate think tank research and civil society coalitions focused on emerging autocratic threats to democracy. These GMF initiatives have analyzed malign authoritarian financial interference in elections, national security threats from unregulated money launderers, international development aid to counter kleptocracy, homegrown toolkits of autocratic corruption in Turkey and Poland, Ukrainian governance reforms amid war and reconstruction, US civil-military relations in the context of democratic backsliding, and democracy promotion in the United States.

Before joining GMF, Rudolph served in a range of US government positions dealing with finance and national security, including as senior fellow on USAID’s anti-corruption task force, adviser to the US executive director at the International Monetary Fund, director of international economics at the White House National Security Council, and deputy director of the US Treasury markets room. Before beginning his public service, Rudolph worked for seven years at J.P. Morgan as an investment banker and financial markets research strategist.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Babson College and a master’s degree in public policy with a concentration in international trade and finance from the Harvard Kennedy School. 

Olena Prokopenko is a senior fellow at GMF. She formerly managed Eastern Neighborhood programs at the European Endowment for Democracy in Brussels and served as a development adviser at the Danish embassy in Kyiv. 

Prokopenko previously chaired international relations at RPR Coalition, Ukraine’s largest civil society platform, and advised Ukraine’s finance minister on donor relations. She served as a civil society expert for the UN Development Programme and the Council of Europe, and worked as a government relations manager at Hill+Knowlton Strategies.

Prokopenko is a co-founder of the Transatlantic Task Force for Ukraine and a government relations trainer at the Kyiv School of Economics. Her analysis of Russia’s war in Ukraine and Ukraine’s reform progress is regularly featured intop international media, including the BBC, Bloomberg, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, TIME magazine, Newsweek, and Le Monde.

Prokopenko is a lawyer by training and an alumna of the US State Department’s Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program. She holds a master’s degree in political science from Western Illinois University.