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Brussels Forum Session: Eastern Flank in Front 

Radosław Sikorski has served as Poland’s minister of foreign affairs since 2023. He held the same position previously (2007–2014). He has also served as Poland’s minister of defense (2005–2007), and speaker of the Sejm (2014–2015). From 2019 to 2023, he was a member of the European Parliament, sitting on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Security and Defence Subcommittee. He chaired the delegation for relations with the United States.

As Poland’s minister of foreign affairs, Sikorski launched, together with Carl Bildt, the EU’s Eastern Partnership. He also proposed and helped to establish the European Endowment for Democracy and the Solidarity Prize.

During the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity”, he headed an EU mission to Kyiv that ended the bloodshed on the Maidan.

Sikorski is a senior fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and has been listed among Foreign Policy magazine’s Top 100 Global Thinkers for “speaking the truth, even when it is not diplomatic”.

From 2002 to 2005, Sikorski was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, and the executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative.

He served as a war correspondent in Afghanistan and Angola from 1986 to 1989.  

Sikorski is the author of several books, including Dust of the Saints: A Journey to Herat in Time of War, Full Circle: A Homecoming to Free Poland, The Polish House: An Intimate History of Poland, Poland Can Be Better: Behind the Scenes of Polish Diplomacy, and Poland: The State of the State. 

Brussels Forum Session: Euroatlantic Security Outside the Box: High Ambitions, Different Formats 

Benjamin Haddad was elected to the parliament of France in June 2022. He is a member of both the Foreign Affairs Committee and the European Affairs Committee, as well as spokesperson for the Renaissance Party parliamentary group.

He carried the bill concerning the "Prevention of the dissemination of terrorist content online" on July 19, 2022.

A graduate of Sciences Po Paris and HEC, Haddad is an expert in international relations. He has also taught international relations at Sciences Po.

From 2014 to 2018, he was a fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC.

In February 2019, he was appointed senior director of the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council. In his work, he has argued for transatlantic unity in response to Russian aggression, greater European responsibility, and investment in strategic issues.

Haddad is the author of Le paradis perdu : L'Amérique de Trump et la fin des illusions européennes (Paradise Lost: Trump's America and the End of European Illusions) in 2019. In this book, he analyzes the historical and geopolitical forces that determined the transition from a long period of liberal optimism to an era of retrenchment in the US and Europe. 

Brussels Forum Session: NATO at 75: Past, Present, Future — Part I & II

Teri Schultz has been covering the EU, NATO, and the BeNeLux region since 2007, appearing regularly on National Public Radio, CBS Radio News, and Germany’s public broadcaster, Deutsche Welle. She has a particular interest in Afghanistan, having made six reporting trips there, and in Russia and the Nordic region, having lived and worked in Moscow and Helsinki.  

Schultz helps teach media literacy and counter-disinformation to schoolchildren with the Lie Detectors organization and has held journalism fellowships in Russia and Pakistan. She holds a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Helsinki and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from New Mexico State University. 

Brussels Forum Session: NATO at 75: Looking Ahead to the Washington Summit 

Celeste Wallander is assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the US Department of Defense’s Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy. She was previously special assistant to the president, senior director for Russia/Central Asia on the National Security Council, and the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia. Outside government, she served as president and CEO of the U.S. Russia Foundation, a professor at American University, a visiting professor at Georgetown University, director for Russia/Eurasia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relation, and a professor of government at Harvard University.  

Wallander is the author of more than 80 publications on European and Eurasian security issues with a focus on Russian foreign and defense strategy. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council of the United States, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.  

Wallander holds a PhD and two master’s degrees from Yale University, and a bachelor’s degree (summa cum laude) from Northwestern University.  

Brussels Forum Session: On the Frontlines of Democracy: Bolstering Trust in Elections Across the Atlantic 

Amelia Powers Gardner is an elected Utah County Commissioner and is committed to the implementation of cutting-edge solutions in governance. Prior to that position, she served as Utah County Clerk/Auditor. Her experience spans engineering, manufacturing, and business development. Powers Gardner has been at the forefront of innovative initiatives, for example pioneering online marriage licenses and introducing blockchain-enabled voting systems.  She is actively engaged in preparing Utah County for growth, seeking solutions to the housing crisis, and safeguarding property rights. 

Brussels Forum Session: Allied Competitiveness: Can It Be Achieved? National vs. Allied Approaches to Competitiveness  

US Congressman Dan Kildee serves on the House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee and the Budget Committee. Before being elected to Congress in 2012 by his Michigan constituency, he co-founded and served as the president of the Center for Community Progress, a national nonprofit organization focused on urban land reform and revitalization. He also founded Michigan's first land bank, the Genesee County Land Bank, which is responsible for tens of millions of dollars’ worth of redevelopment in the city of Flint. The bank later served as a model for more than 250 other land banks across the United States.

Kildee also previously served as the Genesee County treasurer, on the Genesee County Board of Commissioners, and on the Flint Board of Education. He worked for eight years at the Whaley Children's Center, a residential treatment facility in Flint for children who have experienced trauma and abuse. 

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

Addisu Demissie is a founding principal of California-based political consulting firm 50+1 Strategies and a senior adviser to Future Forward USA, the primary external organization supporting US President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. He has more than two decades of experience in advocacy and campaign strategy, and has led campaigns in the United States at the national, state, and local levels for electoral, nonprofit, and corporate clients.

Demissie managed successful campaigns for US Senator Cory Booker in 2013 and California Governor Gavin Newsom in 2018. He most recently served as the campaign manager for Booker’s 2020 run for the Democratic presidential nomination and was one of the lead organizers of the critically acclaimed 2020 Democratic National Convention. The Washington Post named him in 2009 one of the “Ten Young Black Aides To Watch” in the Barack Obama administration, in which he played a key role in mobilizing and coordinating grassroots support for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, federal student loan reform, and the Affordable Care Act. As political director for Obama’s political organization, Organizing for America, he also worked to gather support for the Affordable Care Act.

Demissie is a graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School, and a member of the California State Bar. He serves on several nonprofit boards including those of Run for Something, Higher Ground Labs, Giffords Courage to Fight Gun Violence, and Vote Save America. 

Brussels Forum Session: On the Frontlines of Democracy: Bolstering Trust in Elections Across the Atlantic

Sebastian Bay is a project manager and researcher specializing in election security, national security, hybrid threats, disinformation, and online harms. He is the author of a recent report on countering hybrid threats to elections published by the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats. His election expertise comes from his experience managing and leading election protection efforts for the 2018 and 2022 Swedish general elections, focusing on mitigating threats and ensuring electoral security. He has authored several reports on election security for FOI and the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence. He has also co-authored a chapter titled "A Swedish Perspective on Foreign Election Interference" in Defending Democracies: Combating Foreign Election Interference in a Digital Age (2021), published by Oxford University Press. Bay has worked with the Swedish Election Authority, FOI, NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (NATO StratComm CoE), the Swedish Civil Contingency Agency, and the Swedish Armed Forces. He holds a bachelor's degree in intelligence analysis and a master's degree in political science from Lund University, Sweden. 

Brussels Forum Session: The Next Generation of Transatlantic Leaders

Samira Rafaela has been a member of the European Parliament (MEP) from the Dutch social-liberal D66 party since 2019. She is the first Dutch Afro-Caribbean MEP and was one of the youngest MEPs elected in 2019.  

Rafaela was selected in 2020 as one of Politico Europe’s 20 MEPs to watch for her contributions to making trade greener and fairer. That same year she won one of the Harper’s Bazaar International Women of the Year Awards. 

Brussels Forum Session: The Next Generation of Transatlantic Leaders

George Melashvili is a Georgian public figure, political science scholar, and civic activist. He is the founder and president of the Europe-Georgia Institute, which was a student organization that evolved under his leadership into a leading civil society organization in Georgia. The institute joined the European Liberal Forum, a political foundation affiliated with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party, and founded the annual Black Sea Security conference focused on international security policy.

Melashvili also established the "Your Voice, Our Future" initiative, which promotes civic engagement, democratic values, and global security in Georgia. The initiative increased youth participation in the 2016 Georgian parliamentary elections.

Melashvili's academic interests are rooted in comparative politics and East Asian studies, with an emphasis on Korea. He was a fellow with GMF's Policy Designers Network and participates in the Warsaw Security Forum’s New Security Leaders program. He is a lecturer on international relations theory and East Asian studies at the Free University of Tbilisi and the University of Georgia. He is also the author of “Korea: Success Story – Lessons for Georgia”, the first book about Korea in the Georgian language.