Cities and Regions

Paul Costello is a Berlin-based senior program manager for GMF Cities. He leads the team’s City Directors of International Affairs (CDIA) Network and contributes to GMF Cities’ democracy, disinformation, migration, and Ukraine projects.

Costello has a background in public policy and prior work experience in sustainability and public diplomacy programs.  He holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and a bachelor’s degree in political science from McGill University in Montreal.

Steven Bosacker oversees the GMF Cities program.  He was previously director of public sector innovation and strategic partnerships at Living Cities, a collaborative of philanthropic foundations and financial institutions committed to closing the income and wealth gap among people in US cities.

Bosacker built a career in Minnesota as the city coordinator of Minneapolis, chief of staff to Governor Jesse Ventura, and executive director and corporate secretary to the University of Minnesota Board of Regents. He has held leadership roles on the advisory boards of the Congressional Management Foundation, the National Civic League, and CityHealth, which recommends the best policy solutions to ensure all people can make good health choices.

Bosacker holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Metropolitan State University.

Mareike Ohlberg is a senior fellow in the Indo-Pacific Program and leads the Stockholm China Forum. She is based at GMF’s Berlin Office. Before joining GMF, Mareike worked as an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, where she focused on China’s media and digital policies as well as the Chinese Communist Party’s influence campaigns in Europe. Prior to that, she was an An Wang postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and a postdoctoral fellow at Shih-Hsin University in Taipei. She spent several years living and working in Greater China. She is co-author of the book Hidden Hand: How the Communist Party of China is Reshaping the World (2020). Mareike has a doctoral degree in Chinese studies from the University of Heidelberg and a master’s degree in East Asian regional studies from Columbia University. She is a frequent commentator in the media on the global implications of China’s rise.