Arctic

Frida Rintakumpu is a resident fellow with GMF’s Geostrategy North team. She previously served as a senior specialist in the Finnish prime minister's office, working in a unit that coordinates security services for the Finnish government, including its ministries. Her experience comprises conducting comprehensive security analyses, ensuring government preparedness for incidents and emergencies, and coordinating incident management.

Prior to joining the government, Rintakumpu held research-focused positions in the private sector and academia. Her international background includes roles involving risk assessment and market research. She has also contributed to various research projects, focusing primarily on post-conflict societies. She has extensive fieldwork experience in the Western Balkans and the Middle East.

Rintakumpu holds a master’s degree in peace and conflict studies from Uppsala University and a bachelor’s degree in politics and history from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

Ambassador Brent Hardt is a resident senior fellow at GMF who brings 35 years of experience leading at all levels of government. He has guided five embassies as ambassador, chargé d’affaires, and deputy chief of mission, and served as foreign policy advisor to US Central Command and US Special Operations Command, working closely with allies to meet vital security challenges. As professor and senior advisor at the US Naval War College, he taught national security strategy and policy and developed a seminar on the evolution of modern Europe.

Hardt joined the US Foreign Service in 1988, serving in Berlin, the Hague, Rome, Paris, Canada, and the Caribbean. He was an exchange diplomat with the Netherlands Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense in 1993. In Washington, he served as Team Leader for NATO Policy in the State Department’s Office of European Political and Security Affairs, where he was responsible for NATO enlargement, NATO-Ukraine, and European Security and Defense policy issues.

Over the course of his career, Hardt has received multiple Senior Performance Awards, the Director General's Award for Reporting, five Superior Honor Awards, and three Meritorious Honor Awards. He also received the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Meritorious Civilian Service Award and the US Special Operations Command Distinguished Civilian Service Award. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and a master’s in law and diplomacy and a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Sophie Arts is the program officer for GMF’s Geostrategy North team, where she covers security and defense issues facing Northern Europe, the Arctic, and North America. Specifically, her research focuses on NATO’s eastern flank, as well as US homeland defense and cooperation between allies and partners in the Arctic. She has published research on NATO partnerships, the impact of new technologies on NATO defense and deterrence, the dynamics of escalation within the cyber domain, and strategic stability in a multipolar world.

Prior to joining GMF, Arts worked as a research assistant at the Atlantic Council and as a trainee in GMF’s Brussels office. She has a background in political journalism and wrote for Spiegel Online International. She also produced news briefs for the European Commission as part of her work for Kantar Media, a media-monitoring agency .

Originally from Germany, Arts holds a master’s degree from Humboldt University in Berlin and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Freiburg. She spent two years studying in the United States, at the University of Virginia, where she also worked as a research assistant in the media studies department and at the university’s Center for Politics, and at Connecticut College.