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.
Gesine Weber is a fellow on GMF’s Geostrategy team, where she works on European security and defense issues. Based in Paris, she focuses on EU defense initiatives, security and defense policy of the E3 (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom), and Europe's role in the global order.
During a 2024 fellowship at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, Weber led a research project on European balancing in the Indo-Pacific in the context of US-China competition.
Prior to joining GMF, she worked as a defense policy adviser at the German parliament and as a consultant for the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation in Shanghai. Weber is pursuing a PhD in defense studies at King’s College London, where she is part of the European Foreign Policy Research Group and contributes to the work of the Centre for Grand Strategy. She is an associate researcher for the European Council on Foreign Relations and a nonresident Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the Notre Dame Center for International Security.
Weber holds a master’s degree in European affairs from Sciences Po in Paris and another master’s degree in political science from the Freie Universität Berlin. She studied Mandarin at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. Her writing and commentary appears regularly in English, French, and German in European and other international media, including the BBC, the Neue Züercher Zeitung, Politico, and France 24.
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.
Peter Chase joined GMF’s Brussels office in September 2010 as a non-resident fellow and became a resident senior fellow in May 2016. His work focuses on the transatlantic economy with particular attention to trade and investment, digital and energy policies, and the EU’s economic relations with third countries.
Chase served as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce vice president for Europe from 2010-16; prior to this he was a U.S. diplomat with postings as minister-counselor for economic affairs in the U.S. Mission to the European Union, director of the State Department's office of EU affairs, chief of staff to the under secretary of economic affairs, and counselor and minister-counselor for economic affairs in the U.S. Embassy in London.
Jonas Parello-Plesner is a visiting fellow in GMF's Indo-Pacific program. His research focuses on Asia and China and relations with EU and the United States. Parello-Plesner has also worked at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) as a Senior Policy Fellow with a focus on European-Chinese relations.