After receiving a record number of applications and a highly competitive selection process, the John Quincy Adams Society is pleased to announce its Fall 2025 cohort of Marcellus Policy Fellows. This is the Society’s eleventh cohort of fellows. The Fellows will spend the next twelve weeks learning from top experts on foreign policy as they develop a think tank style policy analysis on a pressing issue facing U.S. strategy. They will also be trained to produce supporting materials to make their work more likely to have impact, culminating in production of an op-ed and a one-page policy memorandum. Past fellows have gone on to work at a number of prominent foreign policy institutions in government, academia, the media, and think tanks. You can read the bios of our Fall 2025 Fellows below.
Hekmat Matthew Aboukhater is an MPP candidate at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs and the Director of the Young Voices Debates series in New York City. He previously worked with the Quincy Institute’s Democratizing Foreign Policy program and the United Nations Department of Peacebuilding and Political Affairs. He holds degrees from Boston College and EDJ Nice in France. Originally from Aleppo, Syria, he immigrated to the United States with his family in 2015. Throughout the duration of the fellowship, Hekmat plans to focus on U.S. Middle East policy.
Jake Alnapulsi is a political science student at UCLA, where he conducts research on U.S. foreign policy and Middle East affairs. He has worked with the UCLA Center for Middle East Development and the Correctional Association of New York, focusing on issues of sanctions, human rights, and strategic restraint. His tentative topic proposal is building Saudi critical infrastructure cyber resilience as an alternative to U.S. basing in the Gulf.
Carmel Alshaibi is a graduate of Yale College, where she earned a B.A. in Global Affairs, and currently works on international trade law, emerging technologies, and U.S. foreign policy issues in Washington, D.C. She previously served as a Policy Consultant for the National Security Council, leading initiatives on technology competition in the Persian Gulf. As a Marcellus Policy Fellow, she will examine how the United States can approach great-power competition in the Middle East through the lens of emerging technologies.
Cody Fenimore is a Senior Account Manager at Daniels Spaulding Consulting, where he has led fundraising efforts for statewide and federal campaigns in Indiana. He brings international experience as an alumni of the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange program and as a Virtual Student Intern with the U.S. Department of State. His policy interest focuses on advancing a pragmatic, restrained U.S. foreign policy by analyzing how the United States could pursue a deliberate and immediate, phased reduction of its defense footprint in Europe, structured to ensure NATO allies assume greater responsibility for their own security.
Nidhi Krishnan is a recent graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied American Foreign Policy Studies and Mathematics. Nidhi works at the RAND Corporation as a research assistant and is also a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserves. Her research interests include civilian harm mitigation, humanitarian aid, and national security policy.
Selena Lin is a Master’s student in International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She previously interned with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ China Power Project, where she researched Chinese security policies and cross-Strait relations. In 2025, she was selected for Taiwan’s Mosaic Fellowship, presenting policy and dialogue on societal and industrial resilience to Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She also participated in National Chengchi University’s 2025 large-scale civilian wargame on a Taiwan contingency, contributing analysis on cyber defense, industry stability, and societal resilience. Her paper will highlight China’s pursuit of automated kill chains and how the United States can preserve crisis stability and deterrence capability.
Ransom Miller is a research associate at the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group, where he writes about national security and Asia. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley, a former Chinese-language Critical Language Scholar, and has interned at the Department of State and BowerGroupAsia. As a part of his fellowship, Ransom will write about avoiding overstretch in the Asia-Pacific.
Sana Motorwala was the Fall 2024 Scoville fellow at Win Without War Education Fund, where she worked alongside the Policy team to research escalating conflicts, specifically in regard to the Middle East. Sana graduated from the University of Florida in 2024 with a Bachelor’s in International Studies with a regional focus in the Middle East and a secondary focus in Asia. During her time as a Scoville fellow, she produced advocacy reports on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which included advocating for an end to arms sales to Israel due to its human rights violations. She hopes to explore the effectiveness of sanctions and their consequences on the affected populations.
Rameen Sajjad is a recent College of William & Mary graduate (Class of 2025) whose experience in data analysis and international research is backed by field work in Indonesia and Europe as a Freeman Fellow and Global Scholar, respectively. She has applied these skills to inform strategy for organizations like Amnesty International. Her personal interests include solo travel (having visited 15 countries) and badminton.
Luke Thompson is a Political Research Analyst at Americans for Prosperity and a graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. A Fulbright Scholar and fluent Mandarin speaker, he previously served as an English Teaching Assistant in Kinmen, Taiwan. His fellowship paper will develop a strategic roadmap for U.S. foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific region, with a focus on U.S.-China relations.
Drake Tien is a Senior Advisor for Seldon Labs, a geopolitical risk startup focused on forecasting global political events with machine learning and simulation to aid scenario planning, investing, and risk management. Since graduating from the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) with a concentration in Southeast Asia Studies in 2022, Drake has held roles at Micron Technology, The Asia Group, and the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS). He is a Contributing Writer to The Asia Cable and has published articles for the Lowy Institute, The Diplomat, and Channel News Asia.
Anthony J. Tokarz is a multilingual intelligence analyst and geopolitical risk specialist with regional expertise in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia. An economist by training, he has worked in tech consulting, policy research, and development banking. His writing on transatlantic security and supply chain resilience has appeared in outlets such as Responsible Statecraft, The National Interest, and EurasiaNet. As a Fall 2025 Marcellus Policy Fellow, Anthony is studying how NATO’s Bucharest Nine (B9) can serve as a model for partner-led burden-sharing in U.S. foreign policy.
Nick Tselikov is an undergraduate student at the University of Washington, double majoring in international studies and history and minoring in data science. He is interested in general Western history and its application to modern geopolitics, as well as great power competition and Middle Eastern politics. His paper will tentatively discuss a roadmap for a restrained U.S. Venezuela policy.
Nick Weising is a graduate of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and currently serves as a program associate at a national security think tank. His work centers on economic statecraft, analyzing the intersection of economics, policy, and international security.
Lane Wiklund is a research and appropriations analyst with the Illinois General Assembly. He holds a B.A. from St. Ambrose University in Political Science and Business Economics. His research interests include Eurasian security policy and economic diplomacy. In his policy analysis, Lane plans to explore potential peace outcomes of the Russo-Ukrainian War and their implications on U.S. grand strategy in the 21st century.