Justina Budginaite-Froehly is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and Transatlantic Security Initiative within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Her professional focus is on security and defense-related issues, including defense industrial developments, military mobility, and energy security in Europe.

Budginaite-Froehly previously worked at the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Lithuania in the Defense Policy Planning Department. Her work focused on energy and cybersecurity and was shaped by the preparations for the country’s first presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) in 2013. She also worked for the German government consultancy Berlin Economics. She was responsible for the Belarus portfolio of the German Economic Team project, where she provided in-depth analysis of geoeconomic developments in the EU’s immediate neighborhood.

Budginaite-Froehly has written numerous publications on the security and defense policies of the Baltic states and Euro-Atlantic security issues for international think tanks.

Budginaite-Froehly holds a PhD from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany. Her doctoral thesis analyzed Lithuania’s energy security strategy in the EU and NATO. She holds an MA in peace and security studies from the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg and a BA in political science from the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University.

Budginaite-Froehly is a Lithuanian national based in Washington, DC. She has lived in Berlin, Hamburg, Warsaw, Vienna, and Moscow. Budginaite-Froehly speaks Lithuanian, English, German, and Russian.