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Maria Florea

 Program Officer
Bucharest Office

Maria Florea oversees the Black Sea Trust’s (BST) Enhancing the Resilience of Civil Society in the Eastern Partnership project and BST’s grantmaking portfolio for the wider Black Sea region. 

Florea has extensive experience in leadership program design, having implemented GMF’s Leadership and Democracy Initiative for Eastern Europe, which focuses on Eastern Partnership countries. Over the course of her 10 years at GMF, she has helped hone the skills of more than 200 leaders and civil society activists, supported more than 100 organizations working to improve communities in the wider Black Sea region, and organized numerous events and large-scale forums. 

Florea holds a master’s degree in European governance from the University of Bristol and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Vienna. She is also a graduate of the Georgetown Nonprofit Management Executive Certificate Program. She speaks English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian, in addition to her native Romanian.

Franka Ellman

 Former Program Officer, Transatlantic Programming
Berlin Office
Franka Ellman is a former Program Officer, Transatlantic Programming at GMF.

Ceylan Akman Canbilek

 Senior Program Officer and Office Manager
Ankara Office

Ceylan Canbilek joined The German Marshall Fund of the United States in 2005 and is currently the senior program manager and the office manager in the organization’s Ankara office. Prior to joining GMF, she worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration, and the World Bank in Turkey. Canbilek received her bachelor’s in political science and international relations from İstanbul Boğaziçi University and holds a master’s from Essex University in political economy.

Corinna Blutguth

 Senior Program Manager
Berlin Office

Corinna Blutguth is a senior program manager in GMF's Berlin office. She coordinates programming and research on U.S.-German relations, transatlantic security, and German domestic and foreign policy. Before joining GMF, Corinna worked as a program officer for a public-private-partnership of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Robert Bosch Foundation, and the German Council on Foreign Relations. She also gained experience working for the Kolleg-Forschergruppe Transformative Power of Europe at Freie Universität Berlin. Corinna holds a master's degree in political science from the University of Potsdam and studied European Studies in Magdeburg and Brno. Next to her native German, she speaks English and Spanish and has a basic knowledge of French and Czech.

Sophie Arts

 Fellow, Security and Defense, Arctic, North America, and Northern Europe
Washington, DC Office

Sophie Arts leads GMF’s research and programming on Arctic security and geopolitics, and on North American and Nordic defense against conventional and hybrid threats. As a Washington, DC-based fellow within the Transatlantic Security program, she also works on North American continental and US homeland defense, allied cooperation in NATO and other formats, and Russian and Chinese strategic objectives and activities in the Arctic and adjacent theaters.  

Arts joined GMF’s security and defense policy team in 2017. Previously, she worked at the Atlantic Council, GMF Brussels, Spiegel Online International, and Kantar Media. Her prior research covered NATO’s partnerships and flexible formats, the impact of emerging technologies on allied defense and deterrence, the dynamics of escalation within the cyber domain, and strategic stability in a multipolar world.  

Her writings and commentaries are featured regularly in defense publications and international media. She is a member of The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats’ pool of experts. In 2025, she served as co-chair of the task force for global peace and security for the Think7, the official G7 group that brings together the world’s leading think tanks and research centers.  

Arts holds a master’s degree from Humboldt University in Berlin and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Freiburg.  

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