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George Chewning is the Founder and Executive Director of the US-Ukraine Veterans Bridge, a nonprofit organization which connects the American veterans community with partners in Ukraine to help build an effective veteran support ecosystem. George is a US Army veteran and served as an Infantry Officer in Afghanistan. After leaving the military, he led machine learning solutions in large-scale computing environments at Facebook. George is a former White House Presidential Innovation Fellow and co-founded the first artificial intelligence office at the US Department of Veterans Affairs. He has also led strategic advisory for government service providers and domestic and foreign nonprofit organizations.

George earned a Bachelor of Science from the United States Military Academy, a Master of Business Administration from the George Washington University, and a Master of Arts in Public Leadership from the University of San Francisco. 

John W. Boerstler currently serves as the Head of Public Sector at Ipsos Public Affairs. Prior to his role at Ipsos, John served as the Chief Experience Officer at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). In this role, John provided oversight of the qualitative design and quantitative survey capabilities housed within the Veterans Experience Office and worked collaboratively within VA’s leadership to help achieve greater access and health outcomes for Veterans. Prior to his appointment at VA, he served as the Chief Executive Officer of Combined Arms, a disruptive technology company that ensures the social determinants of health (SDOH) are uniquely addressed for underserved populations. John is also a recipient of both the Eisenhower and Marshall Memorial Fellowships, having traveled globally to compare and develop military to civilian reintegration systems. As the first Marshall Prize recipient, John completed a 3-year project in Ukraine to assist in the development of their Ministry of Veterans Affairs – the first of its kind in Europe. John is a native Texan who served honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps as an infantry unit leader in the Iraq War and in East Africa. He holds a Master’s in Public Administration from the University of Houston and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Texas A&M University and teaches a course on Customer Experience at Georgetown University.

Christoph Kedzior is a Berlin-based program assistant with GMF Risk and Strategy. He joined GMF as an intern after working as a trainee at the Swiss embassy in Qatar and completing his military service in Switzerland.

Kedzior holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations and organizations from Leiden University.

Carl Strikwerda is the author of “The Origins of the Contemporary Global Order: From the Nineteenth Century to the Cold War”, published by Palgrave Macmillan in London in 2025. He is the co-editor or author of four books and 30 articles, review essays, and essays in edited volumes on European and global history. His research has been supported by grants from GMF, the Belgian American Educational Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Strikwerda is a former president of Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania and a former dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the College of William and Mary. He taught at William and Mary, the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Kansas.

Strikwerda has served as an historical consultant to the National WWI Museum, as a member of the executive committee of the Council for European Studies, and as a board member of WITF public radio and TV station. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Michigan. 

Bennet Nicolaisen is a Berlin-based program assistant with GMF Risk and Strategy.

Before joining GMF, Nicolaisen worked at the European Parliament’s Directorate General for External Policies and its Transatlantic Relations and Global Governance Unit, and as a program assistant in Aspen Institute Germany’sTransatlantic Program. He also interned at the Bertelsmann Stiftung and its Sovereign Europe Program, the Hamburg offices of a member of the Bundestag, and the office of a member of the Hamburg state parliament.

Nicolaisen holds a master’s degree, with a focus on transatlantic relations, in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Fulbright scholar.

Paweł Świeboda is a Senior Visiting Fellow and Co-Director of the Brussels Economic Security Forum, the EPC’s flagship project on economic security.

In his previous role, he was Director General of the Human Brain Project and CEO of EBRAINS AISBL. In this capacity, he oversaw the building of the Research Infrastructure for the study of the brain - EBRAINS. In the earlier period, he was Deputy Head and Head of Research of the European Political Strategy Centre at the European Commission. He is a member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on the Economic and Societal Impact of Research and Innovation. He had served on the Global Agenda Council on Europe of the World Economic Forum. He is a member of the Council of WWF Polska, an advisor to European and global companies and policy organisations.

 Paweł is also Founder of NeuroCentury, a brain health policy hub and Senior Fellow for Neurotechnology at the Center for Future Generations, and Co-Founder of the Brain Capital Alliance.

He has a BSc (Economics) from the London School of Economics and MA from the University of London.

Peter S. Rashish, who counts over 30 years of experience counseling corporations, think tanks, foundations, and international organizations on transatlantic trade and economic strategy, is Vice President and Director of the Geoeconomics Program at AGI. He also writes The Wider Atlantic blog.

Mr. Rashish has served as Vice President for Europe and Eurasia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he spearheaded the Chamber’s advocacy ahead of the launch of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Previously, Mr. Rashish was a Senior Advisor for Europe at McLarty Associates, Executive Vice President of the European Institute, and a staff member and consultant at the International Energy Agency, the World Bank, UNCTAD, the Atlantic Council, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and the German Marshall Fund.

Mr. Rashish has testified before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade and the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia and has advised three U.S. presidential campaigns. He has been a featured speaker at the Munich Security Conference, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and the Salzburg Global Seminar and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Jean Monnet Institute in Paris and a Senior Advisor to the European Policy Centre in Brussels. His commentaries have been published in The New York Times, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and The National Interest, and he has appeared on PBS, CNBC, CNN, NPR, and the BBC.

He earned a BA from Harvard College and an MPhil in international relations from Oxford University. He speaks French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

Jeannette L. Chu is Vice President for National Security Policy at the National Foreign Trade Council, the leading business association dedicated to advancing the interests of U.S. companies in international commerce.

In this role, she leads efforts to advance the interests of U.S. business in safeguarding U.S. national security and promoting global security through export controls, sanctions regimes and policy initiatives.

A recognized subject matter expert and thought leader on export controls and trade sanctions, Jeannette joins NFTC from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where she served as a Senior Managing Director advising U.S. and multinational companies and co-leading the national security regulatory compliance practice. She will continue to hold a concurrent role as a non-resident senior associate with the Trustee Chair for Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Affairs (CSIS).

She previously served as a Senior Policy Advisor at the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), U.S. Department of Commerce where she worked on export control reform, export licensing and foreign policy matters. She also served at the American Embassy in Beijing and the U.S. Consulate General Guangzhou in several capacities including as the Senior Export Control Attaché for nearly six years, conducting end-use visits to more than 250 locations across China and negotiating a landmark export control cooperation agreement with the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. She was the first Officer-In-Charge of the Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS) in China.

Jeannette received her B.A. in Political Science from American University in Washington, D.C. and is a 2020 graduate of Women in Technology’s Leadership Foundry program on preparing women for corporate board service. She serves on the Executive Board of Ascend Greater Washington and volunteers as a mentor for Ascend’s Corporate Executive Leadership Program, the Women’s Foreign Policy Group and Women in Technology

Gabriel Mitchell is a visiting fellow with GMF South and director of strategic initiatives at the University of Notre Dame’s academic center in Jerusalem.

Mitchell is an expert on matters pertaining to energy security, connectivity, Israeli foreign policy, and Eastern Mediterranean geopolitics. He previously covered these topics for think tanks including Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies and the Hudson Institute, and for Shalem College. He has written widely for publications including Ha’aretz, War on the Rocks, The National Interest, Newlines, and via his Substack newsletter, Invisible Boundaries.

Mitchell holds a master’s degree in political science from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a bachelor’s degree in history from The Ohio State University. He is completing his PhD at Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs.