Civil Society

Susanna Numminen is a Berlin-based program assistant on GMF’s Indo-Pacific program. She is actively involved in several projects of the program including the India Trilateral Forum.

Numminen previously worked as a security specialist in the Finnish prime minister’s office, conducting comprehensive security analyses, developing security preparedness for standard and disruptive conditions, and serving as the liaison for equality and equity. She was also a global market insight associate at Atheneum Partners, an expert network based in Germany that connects clients with industry experts to exchange specialized knowledge. In that position, she coordinated consultations in public policy, energy, and financial markets, among other fields.

Numminen holds a master’s degree in politics and organizations and a bachelor’s degree in political science, with minors in gender studies and social psychology, from the University of Helsinki. She speaks fluent Finnish and English, and has a good command of German and Swedish.

Anastasiia Popko is a program assistant with GMF’s Ukraine: Relief, Resilience, Recovery program, based in Berlin. She is responsible for the administrative part of the grantmaking program and for fostering relationships with grantees. Her primary focus is on strengthening the resilience of civil society and local media in Ukraine and the broader region.  

Prior to joining GMF, Anastasia worked as a partnership manager in Ukrainian online media, developing relations between European institutions and Ukrainian journalists. She has also worked on international cultural and art projects, as well as on decolonization, memory, and identity topics. 

Eka Tkeshelashvili is a distinguished visiting fellow with GMF’s Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG). She works on anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine and provides expertise on Georgian civil society and the geostrategy of the Black Sea region.

Tkeshelashvili previously served as Georgia’s deputy prime minister, minister of justice, minister of foreign affairs, National Security Council secretary, and state minister for reintegration. She also established and led the EU Anti-Corruption Initiative in Ukraine and the Support to Anti-Corruption Campion Institutions, the two largest international assistance programs dedicated to countering corruption in Ukraine. 

Tkeshelashvili is a professor at Kyiv’s Civil and Political School and at Tbilisi’s Black Sea University, and leads the Georgian Institute for Strategic Studies. She holds a master’s degree in international law from Notre Dame Law School, a certificate in human rights law from Oxford University, and a diploma in law from Tbilisi State University.