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Erin Elizabeth McKee serves as the Assistant Administrator in the Bureau for Europe and Eurasia (E&E) at USAID.

Prior to joining the Bureau for Europe and Eurasia, Assistant Administrator McKee served as the United States Ambassador to the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, to the Solomon Islands, and to the Republic of Vanuatu from 2019 to 2022. Prior to her ambassadorial appointment, she served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at U.S. Embassy Jakarta, and Mission Director for USAID/Indonesia and USAID/ASEAN, also in Jakarta.

Assistant Administrator McKee is a member of the Senior Foreign Service, with the rank of Career Minister, and brings a wealth of foreign policy and development experience to her position. Prior to her tour in Indonesia, Assistant Administrator McKee served as the Senior Deputy Assistant to the Administrator for the Human Capital and Talent Management Office (HCTM). She also served as the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL).  Preceding her assignments in Washington, D.C., Assistant Administrator McKee was the USAID Regional Mission Director for Central Asia. There she was responsible for direct management of USAID’s programs in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Before her assignment in Central Asia, Assistant Administrator McKee was the supervisory contracting officer at USAID’s missions in Iraq, South America (covering Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Brazil), and West Bank-Gaza. From 1995 to 1999 she served as a private enterprise officer, then as the chief of the economic growth office in USAID/Russia. Assistant Administrator McKee was recruited as a Foreign Service Officer in 1995 from the private sector.

Before her U.S. government career, Assistant Administrator McKee served as the general manager and then Executive Director for Capital Investment Group’s (CIG) Russia operations, and earlier for Morrison Knudsen, Inc.’s international mining division throughout the former Soviet Union. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, and a master’s degree from the University of Washington. She speaks Russian, Spanish, and Bahasa Indonesia.

Tetiana Shevchuk is a lawyer with the Anti-Corruption Action Centre in Kyiv.

Clemens Mueller is Policy Officer, Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR), European Commission.

Peter Sparding is the Senior Vice President and Director of Policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC). He has written about and analyzed US–Germany relations and transatlantic economic and foreign policy ties for two decades.

In this current role he manages CSPC’s work on economic security, geotechnological competition, and trade. He also continues to work on issues related to the transatlantic relationship, especially German-American relations. His book “No Better Friend? The United States and Germany since 1945” is due to be published in October 2024 by Hurst (London).

Previously Sparding worked at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) in Washington, DC and Berlin. He regularly briefs government agencies, Congress, the private sector, and other stakeholders on a range of economic and transatlantic policy issues. He has been quoted in or contributed to a variety of print, radio, and television media outlets, including the New York Times, AFP, Bloomberg, CNN, Euronews, NPR’s Marketplace, Wirtschaftswoche, Tagesspiegel, and German public TV & radio.

Sparding holds a master’s degree from Freie University in Berlin and has also studied at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. He is a 2015 Atlantic Council U.S.–German Next Generation fellow. He is fluent in English and German and also speaks French and Danish.

Katarina Moyon is a visiting fellow with GMF Cities focused on the ways in which citizen engagement strengthens local democracy. She is a long-term higher education professional who taught courses at Winthrop University for 20 years on American government, international politics, presidential nominating systems, and diversity and community. She also led students and faculty at the university’s award-winning civic and voter engagement arm.

Moyon has served as a consultant on election-related issues in the United States and other countries to clients including Ballotpedia, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, and Street Law. She also has experience with nonpartisan civic education and youth engagement, facilitation and training related to civic life, and other social science research.

Moyon spent a year in Croatia on a Fulbright scholarship conducting election law research. She holds a master’s degree in international affairs from the George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in international affairs and German from Northern Arizona University.

Larissa Doroshenko is an open-source intelligence analyst on the information manipulation team at the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at GMF. As an expert in state-sponsored disinformation, she detects and analyzes foreign information manipulation and interference using ASD tools and other computational methods.

Prior to joining the GMF, Doroshenko taught and conducted research at Northeastern University’s communication studies department and the Network Science Institute. Her projects explored the use of new media for disinformation campaigns and sought ways to mitigate their influence through early detection and grassroots activism. Her research into political campaigning and citizens’ online engagement in Ukraine appeared in leading academic journals and edited volumes.

Doroshenko holds a PhD in political communication from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a master’s degree in media and communications from Mid Sweden University, and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Belarusian State University. In addition to English, she speaks fluent Belarusian, Russian, and Polish, and some French.

Jana Ondraskova is a Washington, DC-based program assistant on the Geostrategy North team. She provides programming and research support on Nordic, Arctic, and transatlantic security issues. Prior to joining GMF, she was a research associate at Business Executives for National Security, where she worked on US shipyard modernization, the US role in West Africa, and broader energy security and defense questions. She was a trainee at EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy.

Ondraskova holds a master’s degree in security policy studies from George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Her work there focused on hybrid threats against undersea infrastructure, the future of Nordic and Arctic security, great-power competition, and counterterrorism strategies affecting the “Global South”. She also holds two bachelor’s degrees, one in international relations from the University of New York in Prague and the other in public Affairs from Empire State University.

Farangis Azizova (Fara Azizi) is a grants manager on the finance team at GMF. With a career spanning more than 17 years, Azizi has managed complex grants and contracts for major donors, focusing on impactful and sustainable programming across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.

In her most recent role as senior grants manager at Tides Foundation, Azizi oversaw a $30-million initiative to strengthen civil society, leading award management, risk mitigation, and capacity-building efforts for grantees. Her previous roles included serving as a program specialist at Counterpart International, where she oversaw project implementation, ensured compliance with donor regulations, and managed grants from development to monitoring. She collaborated with cross-departmental teams to support program expenditures and guided subrecipient performance.

At the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), as general manager and country representative in Tajikistan, Azizi managed organizational operations, strategic oversight of sub-awards, and compliance with USAID regulations. She led a team of 25, maintained government relations, and secured donor funding to support program activities.

Azizi holds an MBA from the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Service in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and is fluent in English, Russian, and Tajik (Farsi). 

Since 2018, John has served as the International Republican Institute’s Resident Program Director in Georgia, designing, overseeing and implementing programs on political party and public policy development, women’s political participation, youth political and civic engagement, public opinion research, election observation, conflict resolution and dialogue, as well as national and sub-national governance. From 2014-2018, he served as IRI’s RPD in the Kyrgyz Republic. During his time at IRI, John has advised a range of political parties, along with national and local leadership across Asia, Eurasia and Europe. He has also overseen multiple international election observation and assessment missions, in addition to observing across the Eurasia region. 

Prior to joining IRI, he worked as the Operations Manager with International Foundation for Electoral Systems in Central Asia, where he oversaw reporting, monitoring, evaluation and learning, procurement, budgeting, proposal development, donor outreach and event management. Before this, John served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Kyrgyz Republic, designing and managing region-wide programs for a local human rights and gender equality NGO. During this time, he secured funding to establish one of Kyrgyzstan’s first shelter for victims of gender-based violence. He also served on USAID Kyrgyzstan’s national gender assessment team, co-authoring the gender analysis for the Country Development Cooperation Strategy (2015-2019).  

Prior to joining the Peace Corps, John spent two years as a Human Capital Consultant with a legal consulting firm in Chicago. He also interned with both the Atlantic Council in Washington DC, as well as a United States Senator, in addition to working on an Illinois Gubernatorial campaign. He holds a BA in Political Science from Loyola University Chicago, as well as a MA in International Conflict Analysis from the University of Kent’s Brussels School of International Studies. John is proficient in Russian, Kyrgyz, Italian and Spanish, and speaks conversational Georgian.