Alberto Tagliapietra is Senior Program Coordinator at the Mediterranean Policy Program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) in Brussels. His research interests focus on EU policies, migration, and the intersection between technology and migration.
Alberto joined GMF in 2019. He holds a BA in international relations and an MSc in European and international studies from the University of Trento.
William McIlhenny is a visiting senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He was formerly at the White House as a director at the National Security Council, and at the US Department of State as a senior policy advisor. He also served as a member of the secretary of state's policy planning staff.
Dr. Ian O. Lesser is a Brussels-based distinguished fellow and adviser to the president at GMF. His expertise includes US foreign and security policy, transatlantic relations, and Mediterranean and Middle Eastern affairs. He also holds the chair in transatlantic trade and economy at the College of Europe in Bruges and is a senior fellow at the Policy Center for the New South in Rabat.
Lesser has held numerous senior roles at GMF, including acting president, since joining the organization in 2006. He was executive director of the Brussels office for over a decade, leading GMF’s work on the Mediterranean, Türkiye, and the wider Atlantic.
Prior to joining GMF, Lesser was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, vice president and director of studies at the Pacific Council on International Policy, and a senior analyst and research manager specializing in strategic studies at the RAND Corporation. He was also a member of the policy planning staff at the US Department of State in 1994-95, responsible for Türkiye, southern Europe, North Africa, and the multilateral track of the Middle East peace process.
A frequent commentator for international media, Lesser has written extensively on foreign and security policy issues. He was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, the London School of Economics, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and received a D. Phil from the University of Oxford. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the advisory boards of the NATO Defense College Foundation, the Antwerp-American Foundation, Atlantic Dialogues, and the Delphi Economic Forum, and has been a senior fellow of the Onassis Foundation and the Luso-American Development Foundation.
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).
Kristina Kausch is deputy managing director of GMF’s South and Wider Europe program, dividing her time between Madrid and Brussels. An established voice on European foreign affairs and Europe’s relations with its neighborhood, she conducts research on a broad interdisciplinary portfolio that includes international security, connectivity, the geopolitics of technology, and global power shifts.
Prior to joining GMF, Kausch held positions with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; FRIDE, a Spanish think tank; the Bertelsmann Stiftung; and GIZ, the German development cooperation agency. She has contributed to a wide range of media outlets including The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Guardian, Politico, El País, RTVE, Defense One, Deutsche Welle, ARD, Der Tagesspiegel, and Süddeutsche Zeitung.