Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer is GMF’s acting president. In her previous capacity as senior vice president for geostrategy, she led GMF’s geostrategy policy and risk advisory initiatives across Europe, the United States, and the Indo-Pacific. Her areas of expertise encompass European affairs, transatlantic and international relations, and corporate diplomacy.

With more than 15 years’ experience in senior advisory and executive roles, de Hoop Scheffer advises governments, multinational corporations, and financial institutions on the political, geopolitical, and macroeconomic trends that shape their operations and strategies. She helps them develop early-warning systems and forward-looking decision-making processes.

de Hoop Scheffer serves as an independent board director on the Supervisory Board of Meridiam and the French Treasury Strategic Committee, among other bodies. She is also chair of the advisory board of the French Chief of Defense Staff and a member of the board of the France-Nederland Cultuurfonds, the advisory board of the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, and the editorial board of The Washington Quarterly. She is a member of the Trilateral Commission.

Prior to joining GMF in 2012 as its Paris office director and as a senior fellow, de Hoop Scheffer held key advisory positions in the French government, academia, and international organizations, including with the French foreign ministry’s policy planning staff (2009-2011), NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (2010-2013), the French Ministry of Defense (2006-2009), and UN peacekeeping operations (2006). She also served as an associate professor at Sciences Po Paris and as a research fellow at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales.

A dual French-Dutch citizen, de Hoop Scheffer holds a PhD in political science from Sciences Po Paris and is the author of “Hamlet en Irak”. She is a frequent public speaker and writer. 

Media Mentions

If European political leaders are edgy so too it would seem are the citizens of their respective countries. In a recent Transatlantic Trends 2023 public opinion survey, the findings revealed a transatlantic disconnect in public perception that could not be starker.
What Macron wanted was to encourage a reflection on important subjects, on which the 27 countries of the EU mostly agree. The starting point for that is to think about the cost of dependencies.
What Macron wanted was to encourage a reflection on important subjects, on which the 27 countries of the EU mostly agree. The starting point for that is to think about the cost of dependencies.
This has led France to actually lead the diplomatic effort from the front. And then you have the US and the U.K. on the other side who are taking a hardline approach to the crisis. So [Emmanuel Macron] has a quite unique position to really play the role of mediator and, I would say, facilitator of a potential compromise.
We won’t have a choice because the United States is finally operationalizing its pivot to the Indo-Pacific. So we will have to much more take care of our neighborhood.