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Asya Metodieva is a visiting fellow with the Engaging Central Europe program of The German Marshall Fund of the United States. She analyzes political developments in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. For GMF, she focuses on Bulgaria’s foreign and security policies, rule of law, and democratic security. Previously, she was a GMF ReThink.CEE Fellow. She earned her PhD from Central European University for her research on the radicalization and mobilization of radical and extremist movements. Her book on foreign Islamist fighters from the Balkans was published by Routledge in 2023.

Asya is currently involved in a project on digital sovereignty in Europe at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, where she is a researcher. She also teaches at Charles University in Prague. Previously she was a fellow with Visegrád Insight (2020) and LSE Ideas (2018), and she carried out a research visit at the University of Oxford. She wrote academic and policy publications and has cooperated with various think tanks and international organizations including the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Radicalization Awareness Network, the Europeum Institute for European Policy, and the Atlantic Initiative. As part of her job, she organizes and participates in international conferences, and provides institutions and policymakers with analyses and recommendations.

Alix Frangeul-Alves is a program coordinator on GMF’s Risk and Strategy team. Based in Paris, she focuses on US domestic politics and foreign policy, and the geopolitics of energy.

Frangeul-Alves holds a master’s degree from the French Institute of Geopolitics, where she specialized in security and defense, international relations, and diplomacy. She wrote master's theses on the geopolitical stakes of the energy transition in the United Kingdom and on the role of American natural gas in the transatlantic community’s geopolitical strategy. She speaks English, French, Italian, and Portuguese.

Beth Sanner is a resident distinguished fellow at GMF. She was previously deputy director of national intelligence for mission integration. In this role she served as the president’s intelligence briefer. She served before that as director of the president’s daily brief and as vice chair of the National Intelligence Council.  

For 35 years, Sanner served in a wide range of leadership, staff, policy, and analytic positions in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence(ODNI), the CIA, the National Security Council, and the US Department of State. Prior to joining ODNI, she held several senior leadership positions in the CIA’s Directorate of Analysis, including leading the analytic effort on South Asia and serving as the deputy for analysis for Russian and European affairs. She also held analytic leadership roles for the Balkans, Central Europe, and Southeast Asia, and was the director of the Career Analyst Program, the training program for all new CIA analysts. 

Sanner is a distinguished graduate of the National War College, where she earned a master’s degree in national security strategy. 

Ambassador Brent Hardt is a resident senior fellow at GMF who brings 35 years of experience leading at all levels of government. He has guided five embassies as ambassador, chargé d’affaires, and deputy chief of mission, and served as foreign policy advisor to US Central Command and US Special Operations Command, working closely with allies to meet vital security challenges. As professor and senior advisor at the US Naval War College, he taught national security strategy and policy and developed a seminar on the evolution of modern Europe.

Hardt joined the US Foreign Service in 1988, serving in Berlin, the Hague, Rome, Paris, Canada, and the Caribbean. He was an exchange diplomat with the Netherlands Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense in 1993. In Washington, he served as Team Leader for NATO Policy in the State Department’s Office of European Political and Security Affairs, where he was responsible for NATO enlargement, NATO-Ukraine, and European Security and Defense policy issues.

Over the course of his career, Hardt has received multiple Senior Performance Awards, the Director General's Award for Reporting, five Superior Honor Awards, and three Meritorious Honor Awards. He also received the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Meritorious Civilian Service Award and the US Special Operations Command Distinguished Civilian Service Award. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University and a master’s in law and diplomacy and a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Maryna Rakhlei analyzes regional developments in Eastern Europe and is part of the team assisting civil society in Belarus. She studied in Minsk and in Berlin. Before joining GMF, Rakhlei covered foreign relations for the Belarusian newswire Belapan in Minsk, wrote for the German newswire DPA and blogged for EuObserver.

Kate Stotesbery is the managing director for Government Relations at GMF, where she works closely with both policymakers and experts in Washington and across Europe to advance transatlantic cooperation through policy engagement.

Prior to joining GMF, Stotesbery served in senior roles on Capitol Hill, where she directed policy work on foreign affairs, homeland security, and immigration. Her work at the intersection of national and international policy has informed key legislative outcomes and strengthened democratic governance initiatives. She is also a commentator and writer on the politics of US foreign policy.

Her international experience includes research on governance and public trust in Malawi as well as strategic communications work with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the Albright Stonebridge Group. Stotesbery has also worked and studied in India and Spain.

A former Penn Kemble Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, Stotesbery is a Morehead-Cain Scholar and honors graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she received the L. Richardson Preyer Award for Excellence in Political Science.

Dylan Welch is the China technology analyst at GMF Technology. He works on exposing and contesting China’s global technology influence, including in AI and digital infrastructure competition. He previously worked with GMF's Alliance for Securing Democracy.

Previously, Welch worked at the Albright Stonebridge Group (ASG), where he interned with its China practice and focused on critical and emerging technologies. Prior to ASG, he completed his master’s in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he wrote his thesis on US-China technology competition in space in consultation with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Earlier in his career, Welch developed teaching curricula in Wuhan, China, and served as a budget analyst for the New York City Office of Management and Budget. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations from New York University and is a recipient of the State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship in advanced Chinese.