German

Julia Pallanch is senior program coordinator for GMF’s Indo-Pacific Program. Based in Berlin, her portfolio concerns the management of operations including the Stockholm China Forum, and Young Strategists Forum.

Prior to joining GMF, Pallanch received training as externalist (foreign policy expert) at the EU delegation in Beijing and supported the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Asia program in Berlin. She holds a bachelor’s degree in sinology from Ca’Foscari University of Venice, Italy, and is finalizing a master’s degree in modern East Asian studies at the University Duisburg-Essen, where she specializes in Chinese foreign policy and EU-China relations.

Pallanch speaks fluent Italian, English, and Slovak, and is proficient in Mandarin Chinese and German.

Hanna Kovhan is a Berlin-based senior program coordinator with GMF’s Leadership Programs team. She supports the organization’s work on fellowship and alumni programs for leaders from the United States and Europe, including the Marshall Memorial Fellowship, the Policy Designers Network, the Leadership Lab, and the Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network. She previously led the Transatlantic Information Media Program and served as GMF’s liaison to the Bundeswehr for the Manfred Wörner Seminar.

Her regional areas of expertise encompass the Commonwealth of Independent States and the EU’s Eastern Partnership countries.

Kovhan holds a bachelor’s degree in translation studies from V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in Ukraine, a master’s degree in intercultural communication from European University Viadrina in Germany, and an executive diploma in the art of diplomacy from the European Academy of Diplomacy in Poland. She also spent a year studying international relations at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University in Georgia and a semester at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. 

Stefan Goebel is the Deputy Managing Director of Operations, Europe, and Senior Office Manager of GMF's Berlin office.

Laura Hope Gammell-Ibañez is the deputy managing director of Leadership Programs at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). She oversees the implementation of GMF’s Marshall Memorial Fellowship and contributes to the full spectrum of next generation transatlantic leadership cultivation at GMF.  Laura Hope began at GMF as an intern with the Europe Program in 2015 quickly moving into the Executive Office where she was most recently Chief of Staff and Corporate Secretary. Previously, Laura Hope has worked as a private consultant for small U.S. businesses engaging with European markets, and prior to that, as a professional equestrian, working and competing throughout the East Coast of the U.S. and Germany.

She received her bachelors in German Studies from Connecticut College and her masters in European and Eurasian Studies from the George Washington University’s Elliott School for International Affairs. She is a 2019 recipient of the Marshall Award for Excellence. She speaks German and some Spanish.

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.