Anti-Corruption

Nathan Kohlenberg is a research analyst with GMF’s Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG). He manages the American Autocracy Working Group, which aims to apply lessons from authoritarian political movements worldwide to organized efforts to undermine democracy in the United States.

Kohlenberg previously served as a policy associate at the Truman National Security Project, where he remains a fellow. He has written about disinformation, election interference, and democratic decline in Defense One, Salon, Just Security, and other outlets. He holds a bachelor's degree from Carleton College and a master’s degree in strategic studies and international economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

As senior vice president of democracy at GMF, Laura Thornton leads teams whose programs defend and promote democracy. She oversees the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), through which GMF tracks and analyzes malign internal and external influence operations that target democracies worldwide and builds strategies to thwart them. Thornton also oversees GMF’s transatlantic trusts, which support civil society organizations and actors in Central and Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans, the Black Sea and Eurasia regions, Belarus, and Ukraine. The trusts bolster democratic resilience through civic education, media literacy, election monitoring, public awareness campaigns, and media and watchdog activities.

Thornton guides GMF’s global democracy initiatives to build communities of practices, share lessons, and forge transnational alliances on democratic innovation. Her research and analysis focus on authoritarianism, far-right illiberal movements, and democratic decline. She participates in numerous democracy networks and working groups as a leader and expert.

 

Josh Rudolph is a senior fellow and the head of GMF’s Transatlantic Democracy Working Group (TDWG), a bipartisan coalition of former senior government officials, lawmakers, and civil society leaders who strive to educate the public and policymakers about foreign and domestic autocratic threats to democracy. He is an expert on Ukrainian governance reforms, and he is pioneering GMF’s work on homegrown autocratic threats in the United States. Before leading TDWG, he was the senior fellow for malign finance and corruption at GMF’s Alliance for Securing Democracy.

Rudolph regularly gives private briefings and public testimonies to governmental bodies, including the US Congress and the European Parliament. He frequently appears in the media and has published work in the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Fletcher Security Review, The American Interest, Dallas Morning News, Just Security, and The Hill.

Before joining GMF, Rudolph served in a range of US government positions dealing with finance and national security. As an adviser to the US executive director at the International Monetary Fund, he formulated and represented official US positions toward matters before the organization’s executive board. As a member of the White House National Security Council, he chaired interagency diplomatic and technical work on Russia sanctions and coordinated other economic initiatives. He also served as deputy director of the markets room at the US Treasury Department.

In 2022, Rudolph took extended leave from GMF to serve as the senior fellow on USAID’s Anti-Corruption Task Force, where he was the lead author of the Dekleptification Guide. He also revamped USAID’s strategy for corruption sanctions and tracked oligarch yachts after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Before his public service, Rudolph worked for seven years at J.P. Morgan as an investment banker and financial markets research strategist. He holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Babson College and a master’s degree in public policy with a concentration in international trade and finance from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.