Katsiaryna Shmatsina is a policy analyst and PhD fellow at Virginia Tech University, specializing in Belarusian foreign policy and Eurasian security. She serves as a pro bono expert on Belarus for the World Bank’s “Women, Business, and the Law” report and is a board member of the Belarusian Organization of Working Women. Following the crackdown on Belarusian civil society, Katsiaryna was forced to flee Belarus and is now based in Washington, DC.