Michał Baranowski is a managing director of GMF East. He was previously a senior fellow and the director of GMF's Warsaw office.
Baranowski provides overall strategic direction and leadership for the organization’s work in Poland, the Baltic states, and the V4 countries. He writes and speaks extensively on NATO, transatlantic relations, and US foreign policy, and is frequently quoted in outlets such as Associated Press, Financial Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Die Welt, Rzeczpospolita, Reuters, Axios, Le Soir, The Washington Post, and Foreign Affairs. He publishes in Polish, American, and European media and policy journals.
Baranowski is a member of the Polish-German reflection group established by presidents of Poland and Germany. He holds a master's degree in European public affairs from Maastricht University, and has studied at Mercer University in the United States and at the University of Oxford.
NATO
Ian Lesser is a distinguished fellow and adviser to the president. He also serves as executive director of the Brussels office and leads the organization’s work on transatlantic relations involving the Mediterranean and Turkey. His expertise includes US foreign policy and European and Middle Eastern security affairs.
Prior to joining GMF, Lesser was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, vice president and director of studies at the Pacific Council on International Policy, and, for more than a decade, a senior analyst and research manager specializing in strategic studies at the RAND Corporation. From 1994-1995, he was a member of the US Secretary of State’s policy planning staff, responsible for Turkey, Southern Europe, North Africa, and the multilateral track of the Middle East peace process.
Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer is GMF’s senior vice president for geostrategy and a member of the organization’s executive team. She leads GMF’s geostrategy policy and risk advisory work across Europe, the United States, and the Indo-Pacific.
With more than 14 years’ experience in advisory and executive roles in the French government, academia, and international organizations, de Hoop Scheffer advises governments, companies, and banks on geopolitical and macroeconomic risks and trends impacting their operations and long-term strategies, and helps them develop early-warning and forward-looking decision-making processes.
Prior to joining GMF in 2012 as its Paris office director and as a senior fellow, de Hoop Scheffer served as special adviser on transatlantic relations to the French foreign ministry’s policy planning staff and as a member of the NATO supreme allied commander Europe’s Next Generation Advisory Panel. She was also an adviser on post-conflict reconstruction and the future of war to the French defense ministry and the UN’s peacekeeping operations department, an associate professor at Sciences Po Paris, and a research fellow at the Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI).
de Hoop Scheffer serves on the supervisory board of Meridiam and the French Treasury’s strategic committee, the advisory boards of the French chief of defense staff and the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS), and the editorial board of The Washington Quarterly. She is a regular public speaker and writer, and the editorial director of GMF’s two annual flagship publications, Transatlantic Trends and Alliances in a Shifting Global Order. She is the author of the “Hamlet en Irak”.
de Hoop Scheffer holds a PhD in political science and international affairs from Sciences Po Paris.
Kristine Berzina is the Washington, DC-based managing director of GMF Geostrategy North. She is responsible for leading programming on US, Nordic, Baltic, and Arctic security and defense issues, and provides analysis on NATO and US and European foreign policy.
Berzina also leads GMF’s Across America initiative, which takes European officials into the US heartland to build regional connections on security issues. She is a frequent commentator in international media, including The New York Times, the BBC, CNN, NPR, France 24, Deutsche Welle, and The New Yorker. She is a co-host of Drošinātājs (The Fuse), a Ukraine-focused podcast and Latvian radio program.
Berzina previously worked on countering autocratic influence as head of GMF’s Alliance for Securing Democracy’s geopolitics team and, while based in Brussels and Berlin for the organization, on transatlantic security and energy issues. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from Yale University and a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge.
Martin Quencez is managing director of geopolitical risk and strategy. Over the past ten years, he has held several positions at GMF, including as deputy director of the Paris office and research fellow in the Security and Defense program. His work includes research on transatlantic security and defense cooperation, and US and French foreign policy, on which he regularly writes for international media. He is a co-author of GMF’s annual flagship Transatlantic Trends report.
Quencez is also an associate researcher for the European Council on Foreign Relations, working in France for its European Powers program. He has taught transatlantic relations at the Euro-American campus of Sciences Po and, prior to joining GMF, worked for the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, focusing on French and Indian strategic thinking.
Quencez studied international relations at the Uppsala University and is a graduate of Sciences Po. He is completing a PhD in contemporary history at Sorbonne Nouvelle University.
Jonas Parello-Plesner is a visiting fellow in GMF's Indo-Pacific program. His research focuses on Asia and China and relations with EU and the United States. Parello-Plesner has also worked at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) as a Senior Policy Fellow with a focus on European-Chinese relations.