Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar is a Visiting Distinguished Fellow with GMF Technology. She is the chair of the Steering Group of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group IT Coalition, a multinational IT and cyber defense assistance format. She also chairs the board of directors at the Global Cyber Alliance. Previously, she was the director of the Digital Society Institute at the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin. From 2018 to 2021, she served as ambassador for cyber diplomacy and director general of the Department of Cyber Diplomacy at the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she led Estonia's efforts to promote norms and international law to guide the behavior of states in their cyber activities. She also contributed to several UN working groups on cybersecurity. Prior to that, she worked as head of the Cyber Policy Coordination Unit at the European External Action Service, where she led and coordinated EU external relations on cyber issues and co-led the preparation of European Cybersecurity Strategies. She established EU strategic cyber dialogues with the US, India, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, and a number of international organizations. She also launched the EU's global cyber capacity-building programs and led the development of the EU Cyber Diplomacy Toolbox to strengthen the EU's response to malicious cyber activity. In 2011, she was assigned to the NATO International Staff to prepare NATO's Cyber Defence Policy.
Defense Cooperation
Oscar Luigi Guccione is a program assistant in GMF’s Transatlantic Security Program in Warsaw. He is also a junior fellow with NATO. His work involves research on Poland and Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on European defense-industrial policy, EU–NATO coordination, and Poland’s domestic and foreign policy. He contributes to GMF’s research and policy engagement through analytical briefs, high-level convenings, and outreach to stakeholders in government, industry, and civil society.
Previously, Guccione worked at the European University Institute in Florence and at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Secretariat in Vienna, and served on Reuters’ Global Picture Desk in Gdańsk, Poland.
Guccione is a PhD candidate in Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw, where his research examines gender representation and the radical right in Europe. He holds an advanced professional master’s degree in international relations and diplomatic affairs from LUMSA University, and a double master’s degree in European Studies from the Jagiellonian University and the University of Padua.