Jan Erik Surotchak serves as Senior Director for Transatlantic Strategy at the International Republican Institute (IRI), where he oversees regional programming focused on the key threats to the alliance of democratic societies in the Transatlantic space inclusive of state-sponsored disinformation efforts, weaknesses among traditional political parties and the rise of anti-establishment political movements and leaders, and growing engagement by authoritarian powers designed to drive the United States and its European allies apart. He has lived and worked in Central Europe for over two decades and has taken part in election observation missions and political assessments worldwide for IRI, among others in Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, China, Haiti, Honduras, Jordan, Nigeria, Somaliland, and Turkey. Surotchak is also IRI’s lead on relationships with political parties in the European Union, in particular with the European People’s Party (EPP), the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) party, and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), as well as with the International Democrat Union (IDU), the global alliance of center-right parties. He co-edited IRI’s Why We Lost: Explaining the Rise and Fall of the Center-Right in Central and Eastern Europe, 1996-2002, and Why and How We Won: Center-Right Parties in East-Central Europe and Their Return to Power in the 2000s. Surotchak was elected to five terms on Borough Council in his hometown of Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania, beginning in 2000. Jan Erik holds an MA in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School, Tufts University, and a BA in international relations from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He also won a Fulbright Fellowship in Kiel, Germany.