Katelynn Henics is a Program Assistant with the Democratic Resilience Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

Katelynn is a former Democratic Resilience Intern at CEPA, where she supported research on Russia’s shadow war in Europe and China’s authoritarian expansion and strategic alignment with Russia, while also providing logistical and administrative support to the Democratic Resilience team. In addition to her time at CEPA, Katelynn occasionally works as a Junior Event Manager at IBF Connect, supporting high-level international policy events in partnership with the EU Delegation to the United States. She previously worked at the University of Pennsylvania Career Services and interned at the Partnership for Public Service, where she supported federal executive leadership programs. She earned bachelor’s degrees in Russian and Eastern European Studies and with distinction in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania.

During her undergraduate studies, she completed advanced Russian Language at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Additionally, while at UPenn, she wrote a senior thesis examining Putin’s foreign policy between 2000 and 2018, analyzing how domestic vulnerability and external security concerns shaped Russia’s foreign policy. Her research interests include Russian foreign policy, democratic resilience, authoritarian influence, and European security. She speaks fluent Hungarian and intermediate Russian.