New GCA Appointments for Strategy and Development, Communications, and Partnerships

The Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) has recently appointed three professionals from Macedonia, Spain, and the United States to reinforce its capabilities in partnership building, communications, and strategy and development, respectively. These new members of the GCA team will expand its ability to provide programs and tools, and develop relationships, worldwide to make the connected world safer and more secure. 

Galia Nurko is the Associate Director of Strategy and Development at GCA. Prior to this role she served as a Senior Cybersecurity Specialist at DAI’s Center for Digital Acceleration where she led the cybersecurity for DAI’s international development portfolio. This included conducting extensive technical research, establishing strategic partnerships, and mapping the cybersecurity ecosystems of emerging economies to inform programming. Galia worked extensively to support Ukraine, as well as countries in the Western Balkans, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America, to strengthen their cybersecurity through bottom-up and top-down approaches. In addition to this, she also designed and applied a research methodology to gather and analyze qualitative data on the interplay of digital access and perceptions of trust and privacy amongst urban youth in Ghana and India. Prior to joining DAI, Galia worked as a Graduate Policy Fellow with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and conducted research on emerging technology at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Preceding this, she served as the Director of Media Relations for the Embassy of Israel to the United States. Galia has a Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and a Bachelor of Arts in History from The Ohio State University. She is fluent in Spanish and English and speaks Hebrew proficiently. 

Marina Calvo is the Director of Strategic Communications at GCA. Prior to this role she worked for nine years at MAPFRE’s External Relations & Communication Corporate Area dealing with communication related to Innovation since 2021, as well as International Communication since 2013. Marina has coordinated communications officers around the world to align messages, deploy strategies and plans, and organized international visits of senior representatives. She served at the Nuclear Safety Council for seven years focusing on reinforcing transparency and public outreach and coordinated a roadmap on crisis communication in the nuclear safety field, working closely with contact points and multilateral organizations. From 2004 to 2007 she worked as a communications officer at the Ministry of Interior. Preceding this she served as a journalist at the business and finance newspaper Cinco Dias, working in economy and markets for the digital edition, and prior to that for EL PAIS.es and the extinct Inicia portal. She earned a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Universidad Autónoma-EL PAÍS. She is a sworn translation of French and is fluent in Spanish, English, and French, with some German. 

Marija Dimovska is the most recent addition to the GCA Partnership and Sustainability team. She will be working as GCA’s new Associate Director of Partnership. Prior to this role she worked as a national planner on youth development projects with the U.S. Peace Corps in North Macedonia strengthening the capacities of young people from across the country. She assisted in the development of youth and workforce development programs targeting young women and minorities and worked closely on their sustainability. She has over ten years experience as a project manager in the non-governmental sector and three years of experience as operational manager in the private IT sector. She has experience in national and regional projects Implementation, whose donors include USAID, the U.S. Embassy, Kvinna til Kvinna, and IPA. Marija has a strong background in project coordination, project stakeholder mapping, and engagement, capacity building, and monitoring. As a project manager within Startup Macedonia she worked on the development of the first digital data-driven ecosystem platform and actively participated in the mapping process of startups at various stages of their development. More importantly she contributed to the identification of new stakeholders and establishing partnerships with startup growth service providers on a national, regional, and international level. She has been a SAYP Fellowship at Lund University in Sweden, a WEASA Natolin College Fellow, and a U.S. World Chicago Fellow.  

These appointments continue to grow GCA’s global capability and diversity.

In addition, GCA recently appointed Komal Bazaz Smith as its Global Business Officer, and in January the GCA Board of Directors appointed Ms. Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar as Board chair. Ambassador Tiirmaa-Klaar is Director of the Digital Society Institute, European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) in Berlin.