Civil Society

Colleen Scribner is deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Program at GMF. Prior to joining the organization, she served as senior program manager for Asia programs at Freedom House, where she led strategy and oversaw human rights and democratic resilience programming across the region. Before that, she worked on Freedom House’s Emergency Assistance Program, rising from senior program associate to program manager. She designed and implemented rapid response grantmaking, civil society protection, and socio-political change programs for at-risk civil society organizations and human rights defenders in restrictive environments globally. She has also held roles at the Public International Law and Policy Group and the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery.

Scribner was a 2023 Penn Kemble Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy and the 2020 Young Professionals in Foreign Policy Rising Experts Human Rights Fellow. She holds a master’s degree from American University’s School of International Service in global governance, politics, and security and a bachelor’s degree from Occidental College in diplomacy and world affairs.

Nedim Useinow is a program manager with the GMF Ukraine Cities Partnership initiative. He focuses on supporting the rebuilding and sustainable, innovative development of Ukraine’s cities.

Before joining GMF, Useinow served as a program officer at ARTICLE 19, where he managed projects on digital security and human rights. He also worked with the Jerzy Regulski Foundation in Support of Local Democracy, a Polish organization promoting self-governance, as an expert helping to share Poland’s experience in democratic transformation with Ukrainian cities. At TechSoup, he led projects focused on digitizing public services at the municipal level in Ukraine. Earlier, at Solidarity Fund PL, he was part of the team coordinating a grant program supporting Ukraine’s decentralization reforms.

Useinow studied political science and cultural studies at the University of Gdańsk and the University of Warsaw. He has been a guest lecturer and the author of several academic publications. He regularly appears in the media, providing commentary on political affairs, regional security, and local development.