European Union

Ansgar Baums joined GMF as a Helmut Schmidt Fellow in June 2023. He was formerly in government relations at Zoom Video Communications. Prior to that, Baums held other positions within the corporate world, most recently as head of the Global Strategy Program at HP and as head of Government Relations Europe/Middle East/Africa at Hewlett-Packard. Baums also worked for SAP AG, the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications, and New Media – Bitkom e.V., and Germany's Office for the Protection of the Constitution. He was a GMF Marshall Memorial Fellow in 2017. Baums holds a master's degree with distinction in international strategy and economics from the University of St. Andrews and a postgraduate diploma in political science from the Free University Berlin. During his Helmut Schmidt Fellowship, Baums is conducting research on the geo-technology policy rift within the transatlantic alliance and the danger of separate US and EU approaches toward China in this area.

Nikki Garza is a development operations assistant at GMF. She is concurrently a graduate student at American University's School of International Service, studying ethics, peace, and human rights. Her professional experience includes supporting federal and state policy objectives and leading projects for her own startup, which promotes paid internships at international organizations, and for mid- to senior-level leaders in the public and private sectors. Garza began her career conducting research on perceptions of climate change at Lund University in Sweden before joining the American Red Cross. Her expertise includes nonprofit management, cross-cultural awareness, strategic planning, operations management, and social science research. Garza holds a bachelor's degree (cum laude) in sociology and psychology from the University of Houston.