Dr. Fernanda Magnotta, based in São Paolo, is a senior fellow at the Brazil Institute in Washington, DC, and a senior fellow at CEBRI, Brazil’s leading think tank. An expert on US foreign policy and US–China–Latin America relations, she is the head of the International Relations Program at FAAP and serves on the editorial board of FUNAG, the academic branch of Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign Relations. She is also an international affairs analyst for CNN. In 2025, Dr. Magnotta was awarded the rank of Officer of the Order of Rio Branco, Brazil’s highest honor in the field of international relations.
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Dr. Grace Wermenbol is a senior fellow for International Security and Geopolitics at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. Dr. Wermenbol is a former Middle East specialist at the US Department of State. Prior to that, Dr. Wermenbol was a Middle East director at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), where she served both on the National Intelligence Management Council and the National Intelligence Council. She joined ODNI from the US intelligence community, where she worked on counterterrorism issues in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Dr. Wermenbol is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and the author of A Tale of Two Narratives (Cambridge University Press, 2021), a study of Israeli and Palestinian societies in the post-Oslo era. She is the founder and executive director of Boussole Mondiale, a global advisory firm based in Paris that works with select private companies and public sector entities at the intersection of geopolitics, business, and global strategy. She holds a master's and DPhil from St. Antony’s College, the University of Oxford.
Chris Ogunmodede, based in Lagos, is an independent analyst of African politics, security, and international affairs with a focus on West Africa, pan-African affairs, multipolarity, global governance, and multilateralism. Ogunmodede is the author of Penkelemesi, a newsletter about African political economy, international affairs, and culture. He is a member of the African Research Network on Regional and Global Governance Innovation, a pan-African community of scholars, policymakers, and practitioners.
Katie Crisalli is senior development manager for foundations at GMF. Based in Washington, DC, she leads engagement with North American foundations to mobilize resources to support the organization’s mission.
Prior to joining GMF, Crisalli was associate director for foundation relations at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where she managed foundation and NGO donor portfolios for 43 policy programs including international security, development, technology, and geopolitics. Her responsibilities included coordinating fundraising strategies and donor engagement, supporting prospect research, and managing grant compliance and reporting.
Crisalli has also held multiple roles at CARE, where she led resource development, grant management, and stewardship for a global food and nutrition program operating in 33 countries. She secured funding to support program expansion and contributed to donor reporting, proposal development, and strategic planning for institutional and foundation funders.
She holds a master’s degree emergency and disaster management from Georgetown University and a bachelor’s degree in media production from Pepperdine University.
Beniamino Irdi is a nonresident senior fellow with GMF’s Global Power Shifts team. His areas of expertise include the geopolitics of the Mediterranean, great-power competition, democratic resilience, and hybrid threats. He is the founder and chief executive officer of HighGround, a political-risk consulting firm based in Milan and Rome.
Irdi spent 17 years in the Italian government focused on foreign policy, national security, and strategic affairs. While in government, he worked in the prime minister’s office, where he advised senior government officials on great-power competition, foreign malign influence, and Russia's war in Ukraine. He also served as special adviser to Italy’s foreign minister and was posted to Italian embassies in Tokyo and Washington, DC.
Irdi began his career as Middle East analyst, and is the author of a book that examines the use of military force against terrorist organizations.
Irdi holds a master’s degree in international policy and practice from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in international relations and strategic studies from Rome’s LUISS University. His analyses have appeared in outlets including Bloomberg, the Financial Times, The New York Times, and POLITICO.
Dr. Rebecca Pincus is a senior fellow in the Transatlantic Security Program at GMF. She is also a senior research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses. From 2022 to 2025, she was the director of the Polar Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. Previously, she was on the faculty in the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the US Naval War College, where her research focused on Arctic security and geopolitics. Pincus also served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy as Arctic and climate strategy advisor. In 2015, she was a Fulbright Fellow in Iceland. She has worked on polar strategy and policy issues at the US Coast Guard’s Center for Arctic Study and Policy and served on the faculty at the US Coast Guard Academy. She has testified on polar security and strategy before Congress on multiple occasions and was a contributing author for the Fifth National Climate Assessment. Her research has been published widely in peer-reviewed and popular outlets, and she regularly appears on media platforms.
Melissa McElroy is a people program manager and human resources systems specialist. She has more than eight years of experience designing and delivering scalable, data-informed people programs.
McElroy’s work focuses on performance management, compensation and rewards, human resources information systems and learning management systems administration, and process standardization, with an emphasis on creating thoughtful, tech-enabled employee experiences that support organizational performance and individual engagement.
McElroy has a master’s degree in human resources analytics and management from American University and is certified in project management and Six Sigma for human resources. She holds managerial and board roles for LGBTQ+ and social organizations.
Tara Varma is the managing director of GMF’s Strategic Foresight program and director of the organization’s Paris office. Prior to joining GMF, she was a visiting fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.
Her research focus includes French and European foreign policy priorities. In particular, she works on European strategic autonomy, European defense and security priorities, and transatlantic developments in Europe. She is also interested in the nexus between domestic and foreign policies inside the EU, and in Indo-Pacific security and the role Europeans could play in it.
Previously, Varma was a senior policy fellow and the head of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, where she followed French foreign policy and European and Asian security developments. In 2022, she was part of the working group on the French European Council presidency set up by the French Foreign Ministry. In November 2023, Varma was honored as a Knight of the National Order of Merit of France for her contribution to the resulting report, A Europe for Today and Tomorrow: Sovereignty, Solidarity, Shared Identity.
Varma has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Le Monde, and other outlets, appearing regularly on France24. She is a frequent guest on several podcast shows, including “Le Collimateur” and the Center for a New American Security’s “Brussels Sprouts” podcast.
Varma has a master’s degree in international relations from Sciences Po Lille and a master’s degree in international politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
George Riddell is the managing director at Goyder Ltd. A leading expert in international trade policy, he has extensive experience advising businesses, governments, and organizations on how to navigate global trade complexities. Previously, Riddell was director of trade strategy at EY LLP, providing strategic guidance on impacts of trade negotiations, supply chain resilience, and sustainability measures to clients. Prior to that, he served as senior trade attaché with the UK Foreign Office in Geneva, representing the United Kingdom at the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the UN. He also served as a special advisor to the Kenyan government during the WTO’s Tenth Ministerial Conference. With a deep understanding of geopolitical risks and trade policy dynamics, Riddell supports clients in developing strategies to mitigate risks and seize global market opportunities. He holds a master’s degree in international relations from Durham University.
Evan T. Bloom is a visiting senior fellow focused on transatlantic security, the Arctic, and other issues related to polar, international environmental, and ocean affairs.
Bloom is a lawyer and former senior American diplomat. During his 30-year career at the US Department of State, he served as acting deputy assistant secretary of state for oceans and fisheries. He was also director of the Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs and a member of the federal Senior Executive Service. He currently serves as senior advisor to UiT The Arctic University of Norway’s Centre for the Ocean and the Arctic, marine protected area policy advisor to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, polar governance chair of the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies, and adjunct professor at the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies. He was a senior fellow at the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute.
Bloom helped establish the Arctic Council, negotiating its initial rules and documents in 1996. He supervised US representation in the council from 2006 to 2020. He co-chaired its task force that produced the eight-party Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Science Cooperation in 2017. He also co-chaired the council’s ecosystem-based management experts group. He led the US delegation to high-seas treaty negotiations (biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction) at the UN from 2016 to 2020, and chaired the executive committee of the federal Extended Continental Shelf Task Force and supervised State Department representation at the International Maritime Organization and the International Seabed Authority. He also led US delegations to numerous law-of-the-sea bilateral and multilateral dialogues and served as the State Department’s representative to the White House Ocean Policy Committee.