GMF Cities

Henri-Paul Normandin is a Canadian diplomat who served as Ambassador to Haiti and as Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations. He has engaged in diplomacy and international development for nearly 40 years, with pioneering work in democracy, human rights, and governance. He worked for several years in China and has managed a portfolio of programs in Africa, the Americas, and Southeast Asia across a wide range of areas from peacekeeping to the environment. More recently, he spearheaded the advancement of urban diplomacy at the City of Montréal. Normandin is currently a Fellow at the Institut d’études internationales de Montréal and a Visiting Fellow at Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania. He holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from McGill University and served as a legal aid lawyer in Québec. He also holds a Master’s degree in political science (international relations) from University of Ottawa.

Tarsi Dunlop serves as a Senior Program Officer for GMF Cities at The German Marshall Fund of the United States. Dunlop is committed to building governance capacity and infrastructure at the local level with more than a decade of nonprofit experience. She served as a Program and Membership Associate and a Policy and Program Manager for Local Progress at the Center for Popular Democracy from 2015 to 2021. Prior to that, she was the Program and Operations Manager at the Learning First Alliance, a national partnership of education associations committed to strengthening public schools for all children. From 2009 to 2011, Dunlop was the Director of Operations and Communications at the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network (now the Roosevelt Network), the nation’s first student policy organization.

Julie Nelson is the Senior Vice President of Programs at Race Forward. She was the Founding Director of the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE), a joint project of Race Forward and the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley where she serves as a Senior Fellow.