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Brussels Forum Session: Fresh Off the Campaign Trail: Stories From the 2024 US Primary

Sarah Wheaton is the Brussels-based chief policy correspondent for POLITICO Europe, the author of the weekly EU Influence newsletter, and host of the EU Confidential podcast. She focuses on top policy news, in-depth reporting, and special projects. She was previously a senior policy reporter on POLITICO Europe’s health team.

Before moving to Belgium, Wheaton was a White House correspondent for POLITICO, covering the final two years of the Obama administration, and a health care reporter for POLITICO Pro. She spent the first part of her career at The New York Times, where she covered breaking news, the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, and the White House.

Wheaton holds a bachelor’s degree in political communication from The George Washington University. 

Brussels Forum Session: Euro-Atlantic Security Outside the Box: High Ambitions, Different Formats

Imants Lieģis is diplomatic adviser to Latvia’s defense minister, a position he held in 2009-2010.

Lieģis’ career with the Latvian government began in 1992 and has focused on security, defense, and foreign affairs. As a diplomat, he served as ambassador to NATO, the EU Political and Security Committee, Spain, Hungary, and France. He was a member of Latvia’s parliament (Saeima) between 2010 and 2011.

Lieģis has worked with the Latvian Institute of International Affairs, where he remains an associate researcher. He is a member of the senior network of the European Leadership Network and of the Alphen Group.

Lieģis holds a law degree from Newcastle University. 

Brussels Forum Session: The Economic Counteroffensive: Rebuilding Ukraine

Stuart Smith leads the structural design team at Arup in Germany. He is an expert in innovation and sustainability in structural design, and he established a series of research projects—including prototype development—on open-source design, digital fabrication, and material cycles.

Smith contributed to the design of the Tate Modern in London, the CCTV Tower in Beijing, and the Reforma 509, a 240-meter-tall building in the highly seismic Mexico City. He has worked with prominent artists such as Doris Salcedo for the installation "Shibboleth" at the Tate Modern and Ai Wei Wei for the Serpentine Pavilion 2012.

Smith studied civil engineering at City University and Imperial College in London and went on to work for Arup London for almost 20 years before moving to the company’s Berlin office.

Brussels Forum Session: NATO at 75: Past, Present, Future – Part II

Lord (George) Robertson of Port Ellen was NATO's tenth secretary general from 1999 to 2003 and UK secretary of state for defence from 1997 to 1999. During his time at NATO, he announced the invoking of Article 5, the self-defense guarantee, for the first time in the alliance’s history.

Robertson was a member of the British House of Commons for 21 years and a member of the UK shadow cabinet from 1993 to 1997. He was named joint parliamentarian of the year in 1992 and appointed to the House of Lords in 1999. He was chief opposition spokesman on Europe for nine years.

Robertson is now chancellor of the University of Dundee; a senior counsellor with the Washington, DC-based consultancy, The Cohen Group; vice patron of the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo; and a senior adviser with BP and 5654 & Company, a consultancy. He is also a special adviser to Chatham House and is on the boards of the Centre for European Reform, Trinity House, and the British Forces Foundation. He serves on the Atlantic Council’s international advisory board and is co-chair of the Responsible Energy Forum.

Robertson’s previous positions include deputy chairman of Cable and Wireless and, in Russia, TNK-BP. He was also chairman of Western Ferries and the FIA Foundation. He has held non-executive directorships with the Weir Group, Smiths Group, and Monaco Telecom.  

 Robertson’s international honors include being one of the 16 Knights of the Order of the Thistle and Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. He is among the few non-Americans to have received the highest US civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

Brussels Forum Session: Euro-Atlantic Security Outside the Box: High Ambitions, Different Formats

US Representative Chrissy Houlahan is an Air Force veteran, engineer, entrepreneur, and educator who is now the first woman to represent Pennsylvania's 6th District in Congress. She is a former member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee 

Houlahan has helped lead several thriving southeastern Pennsylvania companies including AND1, a basketball apparel company, and B Lab, the organization that launched the B Corporation movement. She went on to serve in Teach for America as a chemistry teacher in North Philadelphia and then led a nonprofit helping thousands of underserved students across the United States build literacy skills.  

While serving in Congress, Houlahan has been awarded the Abraham Lincoln Leadership for America Award, presented by the US Chamber of Commerce to honor lawmakers for their work supporting a free enterprise system, and three Congressional Management Foundation Democracy awards for outstanding achievement in transparency and accountability, constituent services, and workplace environment. She is the first member of Congress to win in two categories in a single congressional term.  

Houlahan holds an engineering degree from Stanford University and a master’s degree in technology and policy from MIT.

Brussels Forum Session: The Economic Counteroffensive: Rebuilding Ukraine

Valentyna Shulimborska is COO at Ro3kvit, a coalition of more than 100 professionals from Ukraine and other countries who create knowledge and methodologies for the rebuilding of Ukraine’s urban and rural landscapes and infrastructure.  

Shulimborska is a program and project manager with extensive experience in leading large-scale transformational projects in manufacturing and supply chains. Her background includes managing geographically dispersed stakeholders of various cultures and seniority.

Brussels Forum Session: The Economic Counteroffensive: Rebuilding Ukraine

Karl Jensen joined AECOM in 2020 to lead the national governments business line. He supports governments worldwide with solutions to complex water, environmental, transportation, building, and energy infrastructure challenges. He also oversees AECOM’s disaster resilience solutions practice, which is dedicated to responding to natural and human-caused disasters, restoring affected communities, and developing mitigation and resilience solutions to protect against future events.  

Throughout his career, Jensen has held leadership positions in engineering and construction, defense, and aerospace. Prior to AECOM, he led strategy and sales for the national governments sector of CH2M / Jacobs, with more than $2 billion in annual revenue and a sales team of nearly 100. His other roles within the defense industry have included deputy of corporate strategy at Raytheon and senior vice president of business development at CACI.  

Prior to his roles in industry, Jensen was a US Navy officer. He was part of the Navy Space Cadre and a designated acquisition professional, and led procurements for the intelligence community. He was a naval aviator with more than 40 combat flights in Iraq and Somalia.

Jensen holds a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the US Naval Academy, a master’s degree in astronautical engineering, and an aerospace engineers’ degree from the Naval Postgraduate School. He completed the advanced program managers course at the Defense Services Management College. He has held board positions with CH2M Hill Inc. and Master Singers of Virginia.

Brussels Forum Session: Spotlight: A Response

Ivan Krastev is a political scientist, chairman of the board of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, and a permanent fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna (IWM Vienna). He is also the founder and member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the boards of the International Crisis Group and GLOBSEC. He regularly publishes articles in the Financial Times, The New York Times, and other international and Bulgarian media. 

Krastev’s latest books are: “Is it Tomorrow Yet? Paradoxes of the Pandemic”; “The Light that Failed”, co-authored with Stephen Holmes and winner of the Lionel Gelber Award for Best English Language Book on International Politics for 2020; “After Europe”; “Democracy Disrupted. The Global Politics on Protest”, and “In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders”. His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.  

Krastev is the 2020 winner of the Jean Améry Award for European Essay Writing. 

Andris Sprūds is minister of defense of the Republic of Latvia, a position he has held since September 2023. He was previously a member of the Saeima (parliament) and chairperson of the Saeima European Affairs Committee. 
 
Sprūds is also a member of the advisory board and former director of the Latvian Institute of International Affairs, and concurrently holds the position of professor at Riga Stradins University. 
 
Sprūds has been a visiting student and scholar at Oxford, Uppsala, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins universities, as well as at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and Japan's Institute of Energy Economics. His research interests include energy security and policy in the Baltic Sea region, the domestic and foreign policy of post-Soviet countries, and transatlantic relations. 
 
Sprūds holds a master's degree in Central European history from the Central European University in Budapest, a master's degree in international relations from the University of Latvia, and a PhD in political science from Jagiellonian University in Kraków. 

Brussels Forum Session: Trust in Information in the Age of AI

Peter Pomerantsev is a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where he co-directs the Arena Initiative.

Previously, he was a senior fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he was the director of the Arena Initiative, a research project dedicated to overcoming the challenges of digital-era disinformation and polarization. His book on Russian propaganda, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, won the 2016 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and was nominated for the Samuel Johnson, Guardian First Book, Pushkin House, and Gordon Burns prizes. The work has been translated into over a dozen languages and was dramatized on BBC Radio 4. His new book, This is Not Propaganda, was released in August 2019,. It was a Times Book of the Year and has been shortlisted for the Gordon Burns Prize.

Pomarantsev  has testified on the challenges of information war and media development before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the UK Parliament Defense Select Committee. He was a specialist advisor on the UK Parliamentary Committee on Fake News, and was a member of USC Annenberg’s Transatlantic Working Group on Internet Content Moderation and Freedom of Expression. He is a columnist at The American Interest, and writes for publications including the New York Times, Granta, and The Atlantic. From 2002 to 2014, Pomarantsev  was a television producer on documentaries and factual entertainment programs for major networks including the Discovery Channel and the BBC. He continues to present and write radio documentaries for BBC Radio 4, most recently on disinformation about climate change.

Pomarantsev is frequently asked to host policy seminars at NATO, the EU, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the German Federal Foreign Office, and the US Department of State, as well as at numerous public events. He has helped write in-depth policy recommendations on counterpropaganda and media diversity for both national governments and NGOs, including the UK FCDO’s strategic communication policies for Russia and the western Balkans. He has led seminars and given talks on the subject of propaganda and media at universities including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton. He has been a fellow of the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna.