H.E. Domingos Fezas Vital has served as Portugal’s Ambassador to the United States since 2015. A career member of Portugal’s Foreign Service, Fezas Vital has held a variety of positions including Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, Deputy Permanent Representative to the EU and, most recently before becoming Ambassador, Permanent Representative to the EU.

Ricklef Beutin is the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United States. Prior to this, he was a Visiting Fellow in the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, and he has also served at the German Federal Foreign Office, including as Chief of Staff to Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and several State Secretaries.

Torleiv Opland is the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy of Norway in Washington, DC. Before assuming his current duties, Opland spent nearly a decade at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rising to the position of Director of Security Policy and North America.

Bastian Hermisson is the executive director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Washington DC. Before joining the foundation, Hermisson served as an advisor on foreign security and environmental politics to MP Katrin Göring-Eckardt. His areas of expertise include foreign policy, security policy, and energy and climate policy.

Peter Sparding is a transatlantic fellow in the German Marshall Fund’s Europe Program in Washington, DC, where he works on foreign and economic policy developments in the United States and Europe. Sparding’s work over the past years has focused on the consequences of political and economic crises in Europe on transatlantic relations, in particular the U.S.–German relationship. He regularly briefs government agencies, congress, the private sector, and other stakeholders on a range of transatlantic policy issues.

Jim Townsend is an adjunct senior fellow in the CNAS Transatlantic Security Program. After eight years as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for European and NATO Policy, Jim completed more than two decades of work on European and NATO policy in the Pentagon, at NATO and at the Atlantic Council. His work spanned the Cold War, post-Cold War political reconstruction in Europe and Europe’s new challenges including Russia and terrorism.

Andrea Kendall-Taylor is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Prior to CNAS, Kendall-Taylor served for eight years as a senior analyst at the CIA and as the Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council (NIC).

Niklas Helwig is the Leading Rese archer for European Strategic Autonomy at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. He’s an expert in EU foreign policy and defence cooperation, German foreign and defence policy, and transatlantic security cooperation. He’s previously served as an Adjunct Researcher and Visiting Research Fellow at the RAND Corporation, a Visiting Research Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), a Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins SAIS.

Dr. Andrea Kendall-Taylor is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Prior to joining CNAS, Andrea served as the Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and as a senior analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Sirpa Nyberg is the Minister Counsellor and Head of Political Affairs at the Embassy of Finland in Washington, D.C. She most recently served as the Deputy Head of Mission in Oslo and the Deputy Di rector at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, focusing on North Europe, the Nordic countries, and Nordic foreign and security cooperation. She’s also served at the EU Delegation to the United Nations, the Finnish Embassy in Bangkok, and the Permanent Representation of Finland to the United Nations.

Sharon Pollock-Wilkins is the First Secretary Europe & Multilateral at the British Embassy Washington. She has been a Foreign Service officer for 15 years; she has been the British embassy lead on Europe and Multilateral issues since 2018. On NATO, she is the ‘pol’ of ‘pol-mil.’ During her career she has been posted for 3 years at NATO HQ in Brussels working on operations policy for Afghanistan and Iraq as well as military capabilities. She has also been the UK Deputy Chief of Mission in Rwanda & Burundi and in London was Chief of Staff to Ministers for the Middle East, Commonwealth and the UN.

Matthias Duwe is the Head of Climate at Ecologic Institute in Berlin. Before joining the Institute, Duwe worked as Policy Researcher, then Director, of Climate Action Network and participated in a variety of key political processes including the European Climate Change Programme and the development of the Climate and Energy Package. He also served as an expert on an array of EU working groups.

Darragh Conway is a lead legal consultant at Climate Focus with experience covering a broad array of legal issues relevant to climate change projects, policies and programs. Prior to joining Climate Focus, Darragh worked as a researcher at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on international environmental and climate change regulation.

Eva Hunnius Ohlin is the senior advisor for energy and environment in the Trade and Economic Affairs section at the Embassy of Sweden in Washington DC. Prior to this position, she worked as an analyst at the Swedish Agency for Growth Policy Analysis and managed the local Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce.

Heli Hyypiä serves as a counselor in the Trade and Economic Affairs section of the Embassy of Finland in Washington DC. Previously, Hyppiä worked for nearly a decade at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Finland and served in the Permanent Representation of Finland to the EU and the EU Council’s General Affairs working group.

Dr. Andrea Kendall-Taylor is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Prior to joining CNAS, Andrea served as the Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and as a senior analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Irina Markina is a Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. Previously, Markina worked at the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, counseling members of the Parliament on the Future of Science and Technology Panel.