After a highly competitive selection process, the John Quincy Adams Society is pleased to announce its Spring 2025 cohort of Marcellus Policy Fellows. This is the Society’s tenth 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 Spring 2025 Fellows below.
Anvee Bhutani is an international journalist currently at Columbia Journalism School. She’s worked for global news outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, NBC, and more. She enjoys investigative reporting, especially as it relates to global affairs. Bhutani will be working on researching the human cost of the US coalition operation in Yemen in the last year.
Joseph Brennan is an undergraduate at Seton Hall University studying International and Homeland Security, Data Analytics, and Cybersecurity. His interests are in grand strategy and cyber policy. Joseph has conducted research on cyber incidents in Latin America and the Pacific.
Jack Erickson holds a B.A. in International Studies from Emory University. He has previously interned for the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center. His words have been featured in publications such as The National Interest and China Focus. Jack’s policy analysis will highlight Southeast Asia’s relevance to U.S. China policy, proposing a more integrated approach that can optimize American engagement in the region.
Hao Gao is a first-year graduate student in the Security Policy Studies program at George Washington University. He is particularly interested in the U.S.-China security competition in East Asia and the U.S. Grand Strategy. He is currently interning at the National Interest. He is the co-founder of the GW chapter of the John Quincy Adams Society and a former intern at the Cato Institute’s Defense and Foreign Policy team. His policy paper will focus on Chinese grand strategy and its impact on the U.S.-China relationship.
Marko Gural will start as a PhD student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago in autumn 2025. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from the University of Notre Dame in May. His research interests include international relations theory and international security, with a focus on why states decide to pursue certain strategies of competition against their adversaries. You can read Marko’s paper here.
Caroline Knox is a senior at Tufts University, majoring in International Relations and Political Science. She has worked in public policy and consulting and has studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo. Her research interests include cybersecurity, nuclear strategy, U.S.-China relations, Middle Eastern politics, and East Asian security. Her paper examines China’s recent departure from its long-standing policy of minimal nuclear deterrence toward a rapidly expanding arsenal—projected to reach 1,000 warheads by 2030—and evaluates the appropriate U.S. response. While existing literature largely explores why China is expanding its nuclear capabilities, her research focuses on the evolving U.S.-China strategic dialogue and its implications for nonproliferation and stability.
David C. Lane is an active-duty field artillery officer in the United States Army. He currently serves as a Fire Support Officer in a combat aviation brigade at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, and is responsible for integrating artillery and other indirect fires assets into aviation planning. In his eight years of service he has held a variety of staff and command roles, and participated in multinational exercises across the Indo-Pacific. David is a 2017 graduate of the United States Military Academy, where he studied international history with an emphasis on U.S. grand strategy and counterterrorism. His research interests include U.S. grand strategy and its ideologies, and defense policy. His analysis will examine these topics through the lens of strategic publications such as the National Defense Strategy and National Military Strategy, and explore what shape a future restraint-oriented military policy should take.
Lillian Mauldin is a research fellow at the Center for International Policy and co-founder of Women for Weapons Trade Transparency. She researches transparency and accountability gaps in U.S. policy, particularly within the intersection of domestic and international militarization. Lillian’s writing has appeared in The Hill, In These Times, Responsible Statecraft, Fair Observer, International Policy Journal, and other outlets. Lillian holds a BA in International Relations and Global Studies from The University of Texas at Austin and was a Department of State Arabic Critical Language Scholar in 2021. In her policy analysis, Lillian will explore how foreign policy decisions of interventionism and militarism detract from investment in domestic priorities such as healthcare, education, and childcare, and how these impacts disproportionately affect women and girls.
Stockton Raso is an active-duty U.S. Navy intelligence officer currently assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency. He previously served as a Chinese-Mandarin linguist, providing operational support to Navy Information Operations Command Pacific. Stockton holds a B.S. in Political Science from Utah Valley University and an M.S. in International Relations from Troy University. His research focuses on U.S. military strategy and great power competition. In his policy analysis, he examines the risks and strategic tradeoffs of Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea, arguing that while these patrols aim to uphold international law, they may escalate tensions and undermine long-term U.S. interests in an increasingly multipolar world. You can read Stockton’s paper here.
Corey Shiver is a Foreign Affairs Specialist, currently engaged within the Palace Acquire Internship Program with the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. His work centers around international security cooperation, specifically within the foreign military sales (FMS) program. Alongside his work with USAF, he is currently pursuing a master’s degree with the Institute of World Politics, where he is slated to earn an M.A. in Strategy and Statecraft in May 2026. His projected policy paper will argue in favor of a NATO specialization framework, in which NATO-member states will focus their military capability development to fit within a web of capabilities as part of the NATO alliance, providing a mass, cooperative military organization capable of repelling any form of threat to its members.
Henry Smith is a junior at the University of Chicago, pursuing a B.A. in Political Science and an M.A. in International Relations through a joint degree program. His interests include grand strategy & strategic planning, crisis bargaining, and great power politics. After interning as an Intelligence Analyst at Atlas News, he now works as a Research Intern at the Potomac Institute. His policy analysis will propose a strategy for recalibrating the U.S.-Europe security relationship to reduce the American conventional defense burden while encouraging European states to assume a larger role in deterring Russia.