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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.

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. 

Nino Dolidze is a civil activist and freedom fighter from Georgia. Currently, she is an Executive Director of International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED), a key election watchdog in Georgia. Before joining ISFED, she worked at the International Republican Institute (IRI) for eight years, leading the Election Program, Developing Multi-party Democracy and Political Empowerment of Women. While working at IRI Georgia, she implemented various large-scale projects aimed at promoting the democratic development of the country, including good governance, legislative strengthening, rule of law, human rights, local government. Outside of her work at ISFED, she serves as an expert on electoral and gender equality issues in various international organizations, including USAID and the EU. She has participated in more than 20 domestic and international election observation missions, including OSCE/ODIHR, IRI, NDI, and ENEMO, in Georgia and abroad. She holds a master's degree in Public Policy and Administration from University of Georgia; and Bachelor’s degree in History of Diplomacy and International Relations from Tbilisi State University. She is an alumna of the Women’s Campaign School at Yale University.

Robert McKinnon is a Canberra-based nonresident fellow in GMF’s Indo-Pacific program. He specializes in Indo-Pacific strategic and economic issues with transatlantic and global implications. 

McKinnon had a 30-year career in foreign policy, strategic, economic, and intelligence roles in the Australian government. He has held several assistant secretary-level positions in Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Office of National Assessments/Intelligence. He served as minister-counsellor to the Australian embassy in Washington, DC from 2007 to 2012 and was a member of the 2018–19 United Nations Group of Governmental Experts on Further Practical Measures for the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space. 

McKinnon holds masters’ degrees from the University of London and the University of Queensland.

Maya Fenyvesi is a Berlin-based program assistant with GMF’s Engaging Central Europe initiative, responsible for grantmaking activities and for fostering relationships with Hungarian grantees.

Before joining GMF, Fenyvesi worked at Amnesty International Hungary, coordinating EU- and GMF-funded educational projects. They started their career working and volunteering in small civil society organizations.

Fenyvesi holds a master’s degree in human rights, culture, and social justice at Goldsmiths University of London, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and French from King's College London.