Who We Are

Mark Galeotti

Director and CEO

As well as being the founder and CEO of Mayak Intelligence, Dr Mark Galeotti an Honorary Professor at UCL SSEES, Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI, and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague. He read history at Robinson College Cambridge and took his doctorate in government at the LSE, and has since been Head of History at Keele University, a Senior Research Fellow with the Foreign Office, Professor of Global Affairs at New York University, and a visiting professor at Rutgers-Newark (Newark, NJ), Charles University (Prague) and MGIMO (Moscow). A specialist in Russian security and international politics, he is also a prolific author, and his most recent books include We Need To Talk About Putin (Ebury, 2019), Russian Political War (Routledge, 2019), and The Vory: Russia’s super mafia (Yale, 2018), the last of which has now been licensed for translation into 13 languages.

Katherine Wilkins

Project Director

Katherine D. Wilkins has 10 years of professional experience in accountable governance with a regional focus on Eurasia. Most recently, she advanced the efforts of Open Society Foundations to expose and contest corrupt practices across Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia by identifying high-potential new civil society approaches, building relationships with international policymakers and local partners, and facilitating cross-border exchange. Previously, Katherine evaluated kleptocratic networks for Sarah Chayes, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, administered programs at the Center for Global Affairs, and conducted graduate fieldwork on corruption risks in security assistance for Transparency International. As a 2015-2016 Alfa Fellow in Moscow, she was a visiting researcher at the Laboratory for Anti-Corruption Policy, a joint centre of Transparency International – Russia and the Higher School of Economics. She was a 2016 Rising Expert on Russia & Eurasia with the Center on Global Interests. Katherine holds a B.A. in Russian Studies and an M.P.A. in International Policy & Non-profit Management from New York University.