Meet the Team
The DSI Core Team specializes in geopolitics, geoeconomics and public policy
Dr. Benjamin Tallis
Board Chair & Co-Founder
Ben leads the Democratic Strategy Initiative, manages its research and analysis activities and its strategic partnership network with think tanks, institutions and politicians around the free world. He chairs the DSI Advisory Board and co-hosts the BerlinsideOut podcast.
Ben’s research focuses on European and Transatlantic security politics, their relations to regional and global ordering, and the roles of Germany, the UK, the US, Ukraine, Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, in defending, renewing and enlarging the free world.
Ben is a Brit who has spent most of his career living and working across Europe, including on EU security missions in Ukraine and the Balkans, advising numerous European governments, and conducting policy and academic research at the IIR Prague, IFSH Hamburg and the Hertie School. He also led the ‘Action Group Zeitenwende’ and the ‘Grand Strategy Group’ at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin.
Ben holds a doctorate in International Politics from the University of Manchester and authored the books "Identities, Borderscapes, Orders" and "To Ukraine With Love". He has published numerous influential academic articles and think tank reports, regularly appears at leading security conferences and in the European media. His work has been published or profiled by Foreign Policy, Politico, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Die Welt, NZZ, RUSI and other leading outlets. Ben created the concept of Neo-Idealism in international relations.
Britta Jacob
Senior Fellow & Co-Founder
Britta is Vice-Chair of DSI's Managing Board and leads its German parliamentary and political relations activities. Britta focuses on strategically aligning security, prosperity and ecological modernisation – and especially on how to make business, politics, public and government better allies in achieving our common goals.
A German native, Britta is a Foreign Policy, geopolitics and geoeconomics expert with a wealth of experience working at the top level of political advice for the German Green Party, in political consultancy and advisory work with the Agora Strategy Group and, most recently in business with the global life science company Bayer.
Britta is an alumni of the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), the US State Department's premier professional exchange program. She is one of the Bertelsmann Foundation’s ‘Voices of Economic Transformation’ a high-level group of thought leaders from politics, business and civil society. Since 2024, she has been a member of the BMW Foundation’s Responsible Leaders Network.
Aaron Gasch Burnett
Senior Fellow & Co-Founder
Aaron leads the DSI’s Public and Civil Society engagement work and manages the DSI’s media and international government relations networks in Berlin. Aaron ensures the DSI’s informational awareness, and plays a key role in boosting our impact via publications, media and social media work, and by co-hosting the podcast BerlinsideOut.
Aaron’s own research explores economic security in numerous ways, including how to reform democracies’ economic and trade models and how to leverage democracies’ friendships to boost their prosperity as well as their security in light of the systemic competition with authoritarian regimes.
As a German-Canadian dual citizen raised in western Canada and calling Berlin home for over a decade, Aaron brings a transatlantic view to the DSI’s work, informed by his German family roots and his previous experience as a political journalist in both Germany and Canada. He holds degrees with distinction in journalism, public policy and international peace & security, from the University of King’s College in Halifax, the Hertie School of Governance and King’s College London, respectively.
Non-Resident Senior Fellows
Dr. Jan-Willem Roepert
Non-Resident Senior Fellow
Jan Willem, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Democratic Strategy Initiative, works in the fields of military, parliamentary and political relations and armament at the national, European and transatlantic levels. Jan Willem's research focuses on German, European and Transatlantic security politics and armament as well as on the Arctic and the Northern Flank. In particular, he focuses on understanding and developing policy recommendations for strategic competition between the free world on the one hand and the authoritarian world on the other, in order to ensure Europe's future defence capabilities.
Jan Willem was raised in Germany and has spent significant parts of his career in Europe, the USA and China. He is a recognised expert in security policy, strategy and tactics as well as armaments and military policy, who has also led several national and multinational armaments projects. As an officer (LCol), he has been on several deployments with the German Armed Forces and has completed the Canadian General Staff training programme (JCSP). He is also one of the two heads of Protocol/Main Stage at the Munich Security Conference.
Jan Willem holds a doctorate in law and business administration from the University of Hamburg and the University of Oxford as well as a Master's degree from the University of Vienna. He is a long-standing member of the Deutsch-Atlantische Gesellschaft (German-Atlantic Society) in Bonn, a member of the George C. Marshall Center for Security Studies Almuni Network in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the NATO Defence College in Rome. Since 2022 he has been a visiting lecturer at the European Defence Agency in Brussels and in numerous European capitals. He has published several influential academic articles and security briefings.
Yuliya Ziskina
Non-Resident Senior Legal Fellow
Yuliya Ziskina is an attorney specializing in financial enforcement, public international law, and information policy. She is currently an attorney at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and a Senior Legal Fellow at Razom for Ukraine, where she operates as one of the core international leaders in a global initiative to repurpose Russian state assets for the benefit of Ukraine. In addition to these roles, Yuliya develops policy for the Internet Archive and leads a nationwide campaign to improve public access to digital content.
Yuliya is the principal author of the New Lines Institute report, “Multilateral Asset Transfer: A Proposal for Ensuring Reparations to Ukraine,” the first and one of the most comprehensive analyses of transferring Russian state assets to benefit Ukraine, that has informed the legal basis for legislation in the U.S. and Canada. She testified in U.S. Congress on the REPO Act for seizing Russian state assets, spoke during the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2024 and 2025, at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and in several parliaments across Europe.
Yuliya was previously an economic crimes prosecutor at the Seattle Prosecuting Attorney's Office and a prosecutor at the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board, where she prosecuted violations of New York City’s anti-corruption laws. Her prior roles also included fellowships with the World Bank Integrity Vice Presidency and the U.S. Department of Justice. Yuliya has authored briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Southern District of New York. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, US News, Lawfare, The Hill, and Wired.
Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, Yuliya holds her JD from the University of Washington, where she successfully led an initiative for an institutional open access policy, making public $1.4 billion of the University’s taxpayer-funded research. She is currently based in Washington, D.C.