Benazir Baig is a former Multimedia Assistant at GMF.
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Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar is a Visiting Distinguished Fellow with GMF Technology. She is the chair of the Steering Group of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group IT Coalition, a multinational IT and cyber defense assistance format. She also chairs the board of directors at the Global Cyber Alliance. Previously, she was the director of the Digital Society Institute at the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin. From 2018 to 2021, she served as ambassador for cyber diplomacy and director general of the Department of Cyber Diplomacy at the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she led Estonia's efforts to promote norms and international law to guide the behavior of states in their cyber activities. She also contributed to several UN working groups on cybersecurity. Prior to that, she worked as head of the Cyber Policy Coordination Unit at the European External Action Service, where she led and coordinated EU external relations on cyber issues and co-led the preparation of European Cybersecurity Strategies. She established EU strategic cyber dialogues with the US, India, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, and a number of international organizations. She also launched the EU's global cyber capacity-building programs and led the development of the EU Cyber Diplomacy Toolbox to strengthen the EU's response to malicious cyber activity. In 2011, she was assigned to the NATO International Staff to prepare NATO's Cyber Defence Policy.
Susanna Numminen is a Berlin-based program coordinator on GMF’s Indo-Pacific program. Her responsibilities include the coordination of all operations for the India Trilateral Forum and the Japan 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.
Sayuri Romei is a Washington, DC-based senior fellow in GMF’s Indo-Pacific program. She leads work on Japan and heads the Japan Trilateral Forum. Her research focuses on US-Japan relations and security issues in the Indo-Pacific.
Romei was previously an associate director of programs at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, where she was responsible for the Next Generation of US-Japan Nuclear Experts program and the Mansfield Forum on Energy and Climate Change, among other initiatives. She was also a Stanton nuclear security fellow at the RAND Corporation, a public policy fellow at the Wilson Center, the fellow for security and foreign affairs at Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, and a MacArthur nuclear security fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
Romei holds bachelor’s degrees in English language and literature from the University of Sorbonne, and in international relations from the University of Roma La Sapienza, and a master’s degree in international relations and a PhD in political science from Roma Tre University. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, Kyodo News, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and The Air Force Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs, among other media outlets. She has appeared on BBC World News, the BBC World Service, and the PBS NewsHour to comment on security issues in East Asia. She speaks Italian, French, and Japanese, and is studying Korean.
Zorana Gajic is a former Program Officer, Transatlantic Trusts at GMF.
Anastasiia Popko is a program coordinator with GMF’s Ukraine: Relief, Resilience, Recovery initiative, 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.
Oscar Luigi Guccione is a program assistant in GMF’s Transatlantic Security Program in Warsaw. He is also a junior fellow with NATO. His work involves research on Poland and Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on European defense-industrial policy, EU–NATO coordination, and Poland’s domestic and foreign policy. He contributes to GMF’s research and policy engagement through analytical briefs, high-level convenings, and outreach to stakeholders in government, industry, and civil society.
Previously, Guccione worked at the European University Institute in Florence and at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Secretariat in Vienna, and served on Reuters’ Global Picture Desk in Gdańsk, Poland.
Guccione is a PhD candidate in Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw, where his research examines gender representation and the radical right in Europe. He holds an advanced professional master’s degree in international relations and diplomatic affairs from LUMSA University, and a double master’s degree in European Studies from the Jagiellonian University and the University of Padua.
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.
Ayleen Cameron is a research assistant at the Strategic Democracy Initiatives (SDI) at GMF, where she provides programming and research support. She coordinates international networks of democracy experts, including a group of leading specialists on Ukrainian governance reforms.
Cameron graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University, receiving a bachelor's degree in international relations with a focus on international security. As a part of her coursework, she spent a semester studying at University College London’s School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies. She has regional experience in the former Soviet Union, and her interests include anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine and Central Asia.
Caroline Rabideau is a trainee at GMF’s Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG). She provides programming and research support, and helps coordinate the activities of the American Autocracy Working Group, which aims to apply lessons from authoritarian political movements worldwide to organized efforts to undermine democracy in the United States.
Rabideau graduated magna cum laude from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s degree in political science and international studies with an emphasis in Europe. While studying, she held internships at the US Department of State and the European Institute for Peace. She studied in Brussels at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where her coursework focused on transatlantic security, gender politics, and EU enlargement.