Heather A. Conley is president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) in Washington, D.C.
Conley is an expert on Russia and the post-Soviet space as well as the geopolitics of the Arctic, Baltic, and Central Europe.
Conley served as the State Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, responsible for Central Europe - a role she assumed in September 2001 and held until 2005. During her tenure as a top diplomat for Central Europe, NATO underwent its fifth, and most significant enlargement round in 2004.
In 2009, she moved to the Center for Strategic & International Studies as director and senior fellow in charge of the Europe Program. In 2014 she was promoted to senior vice president for Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic and director of the CSIS Europe Program.
She was appointed president of the German Marshall Fund in January 2022. The GMF is a nonpartisan American public policy think tank and grant-making institution dedicated to promoting cooperation and understanding between North America and Europe.
She has received two State Department Meritorious Honor Awards.
Conley frequently appears as a foreign policy analyst and Europe expert on CNN, MSNBC, BBC, NPR, and PBS, among other prominent media outlets. She received her B.A. in international studies from West Virginia Wesleyan College and her M.A. in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
The topic of her talk will be: "The Commanding Heights: The Arctic Edition."
