English

Brussels Forum Session: The End of Dollar Dominance?

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard is a senior fellow at Bruegel and a nonresident senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). He was a Brussels-based senior fellow at GMF from 2020 to 2024. For seven years prior to that, he was a Washington, DC-based senior fellow at PIIE. He has also worked with the Danish defense ministry and the United Nations in Iraq, and in the financial sector.  

Kirkegaard is a graduate of the Danish Army's Special School of Intelligence and Linguistics with the rank of first lieutenant, the University of Aarhus, and Columbia University. He received his PhD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is co-editor of “Transatlantic Economic Challenges in an Era of Growing Multipolarity”, author of “The Accelerating Decline in America's High-Skilled Workforce: Implications for Immigration Policy”, and co-author of “US Pension Reform: Lessons from Other Countries” and “Transforming the European Economy”. He assisted with “Accelerating the Globalization of America: The Role for Information Technology”. His current research focuses on European economies and reform, transatlantic economic transition, immigration, labor markets, foreign direct investment trends and estimations, the global demographic transformation, and the impact of information technology. 

US Senator Heidi Heitkamp served as the first female senator elected from North Dakota between 2013 and 2019. While in the Senate, she prioritized improving the lives of Indigenous people and working families, stopping human trafficking, guaranteeing affordable health care, addressing childhood trauma, eliminating unnecessary regulation, and securing an energy policy that kept costs low but achieved climate goals. She was previously North Dakota’s attorney general and tax commissioner.

Heitkamp serves on numerous boards including those of The McCain Institute, The Howard Buffett Foundation, the Restore Democracy Initiative, and GMF. She is the founder and chair of the One Country Project, an organization focused on addressing the needs and concerns of rural America, and director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago. She is also a contributor to CNBC and ABC News. 

Brussels Forum Session: Defense as a Driver of Innovation: Ideas from GMF Transatlantic Taskforce Members and Friends 

Gabrielius Landsbergis was foreign minister of Lithuania from 2020 to 2024, during which time he also held the position of president of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. He ensured while in office that Lithuania became known globally as a standard-bearer in the fight for freedom and rule of law by providing significant support to Ukraine and by supporting initiatives to secure freedom in Georgia, Moldova, Taiwan, and elsewhere.

Prior to and concurrent with his service as foreign minister, Landsbergis served two terms in the Lithuanian parliament, the Seimas. He is also a former member of the European Parliament and the former chairman of his center-right party, the Homeland Union.  

Since leaving politics and diplomacy in 2024, Landsbergis has been working on publishing his diaries. They are due to be released in 2025.

Brussels Forum Session: Grading Made in China 2025: Did Beijing’s Industrial Tech Strategy Deliver?

Fernando Dominguez is an innovative engineer, strategist, and vice president of global outreach at SandboxAQ, where he applies artificial intelligence and quantum technologies to impactful global challenges.

Dominguez was previously with Google/Alphabet, scaling projects across Latin America and building ventures at Google X. He has experience in the energy, aerospace, and robotics sectors. He serves on the board of a technology company and contributes to journals including Nature.

Brussels Forum Session: Oxford Style Debate: Power and Polarity- Global Order in Times of Disruption

Daniel F. Runde is a senior vice president and director of the Project on Prosperity and Development. He also holds the William A. Schreyer chair in global analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He previously held leadership roles at the US Agency for International Development and the World Bank Group, where he was a leading voice on the role and future of the group, and US leadership in the multilateral system.  

Runde serves on the boards of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, the Western NIS Enterprise Fund, Spirit of America, and the Ashesi University Foundation. He is the author of “The American Imperative: Reclaiming Global Leadership through Soft Power”. He previously chaired two US government advisory committees.  

Runde was granted the Officer’s Cross in the Order of Isabel la Católica, a Spanish civil order. He graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College and holds a master's degree in public policy from Harvard University.

Brussels Forum Session: What Does the Future Hold for American Democracy?

Dan Conston is a political strategist with more than 20 years of experience in management, strategy, and problem solving at the highest levels of US politics. He is CEO of Watchtower Strategy, a public affairs firm specializing in strategy consulting for CEOs and executives, advocacy campaigns, and crisis communications.

Conston was previously president of the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), the super PAC aligned with House Republican leaders, and became a trusted adviser to two speakers of the US House of Representatives. CLF was widely considered during Conston’s six-year tenure to be the driving force in the Republicans’ picking up 15 House seats in 2020, winning the majority in 2022, and holding the majority in 2024. In that same time, CLF and the affiliated American Action Network raised a record-shattering $871 million, making both groups political behemoths and spawning the careers of members of Congress.

Conston was named the national “Most Valuable Player” of the 2020 election cycle by the American Association of Political Consultants. He serves on the boards of WinRed, the Republican Party’s small-dollar fundraising platform, and America Rising, the party’s outside research apparatus.

Brussels Forum Session: The Middle East: Crisis and Opportunity at a Time of Global Disruption

Barçın Yinanç is an independent journalist with more than 30 years of experience covering Türkiye’s foreign policy and international relations. She is the foreign policy analyst of the T24 news website, and writes analysis and opinion pieces for various Turkish and foreign outlets including TurkeyinDepth and TurkeyAnalyst. She also provides commentary for television broadcasters.

Yinanç was previously the opinion editor of the English-language Hürriyet Daily News, in which she published her own columns and for which she conducted the paper’s weekly interviews for nearly a decade. Before that, she worked in CNN Türk’s İstanbul headquarters as a news program editor.

Yinanç started her career in Ankara, where she worked for 15 years as a diplomatic reporter. She has spoken at or moderated meetings of UN bodies, such as the UN Development Programme, and think tanks, such as GMF, Chatham House, Wilton Park, and the Warsaw Security Forum.

Yinanç studied international relations at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. She is a board member of the International Relations Council Association, the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, and the Berlin Bosphorus Initiative, and a member of the Diplomatic Reporters Association, the Women in Foreign Policy Platform, the Global Relations Forum, and the Institut du Bosphore Scientific Committee. She is also a member of the Ski Club of International Journalists and was an Olympic torchbearer of 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.