At HGA, our mission is to helps companies and organizations sharpen their ability to navigate the Washington and global policy landscape, manage challenges, and secure advantages under conditions of turbulence and uncertainty.
HGA was founded in February 2025 to help companies and organizations understand a wide range of regional and functional policy issues, conduct due diligence, engage the USG and foreign governments, and develop partnerships in both the public and private sector. HGA supports Fortune 100 and medium cap companies commercial needs and has helped commercial partners in the defense, banking, aerospace, intelligence, energy, agriculture, technology and NGO sectors solve complex challenges in the U.S. and around the world.
HGA was founded to provide unique support to companies approaching challenges in the Europe and Eurasia region, and also supports clients on a wide array of issues related to the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America .
Mark Simakovsky is the Founding Partner of Heartland Global Advisors, LLC and a seasoned advisor to executives and organizations, bringing two decades of bipartisan experience working at the intersection of national security, global affairs, and corporate strategy in the public and private sector. He has served in multiple U.S. Administrations, including as a Presidential Appointee.
Mark is also a Senior Advisor for Resiliency, International and Defense at K2, a company which delivers technical consulting services to the U.S. government. Mark is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia, Europe and Scowcroft Center.
Mark has served in three U.S. Administrations, most recently as the Deputy Assistant Administrator (DAA) for Europe and Eurasia responsible for Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and Russia at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2022 to 2025. At USAID, Mark led the foreign assistance response to Russia's full-scale reinvasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Biden administration's top priority for the Agency. He helped lead the Bureau during a transformational period, as it grew to oversee USAID's largest budget ($40 billion) with 200 employees.
Prior to his Presidential appointment to USAID, Mark advised dozens of Fortune 100 companies as a Senior Vice President at Beacon Global Strategies and served in civilian roles in the Department of Defense, the State Department, and in Congress.
Mark served at the US Department of Defense from 2008 to 2015, including as the Europe and NATO chief of staff, Russia Director, Eurasia Advisor and NATO coordinator, and as Georgia and Moldova Director at the Office of the Secretary of Defense, leading the Department of Defense’s response efforts to the Russian invasion of Georgia and Ukraine in 2008 and 2014, respectively.
Mark served in Congress as a Brookings congressional national security fellow in the office of Senator Mark Warner. He began his government service in 2006 as a Presidential Management Fellow in the Office of Russian Affairs, U.S. Department of State. Mark has received numerous awards from the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of State, and USAID.
Mark earned a Master of Science in Foreign Service magna cum laude from Georgetown University, and a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude with honors in diplomacy and foreign affairs from Miami University. He also was a foreign language and area studies fellow in Russian at Georgetown, studied in Russia at St. Petersburg State Technical University, and was a US Fulbright scholar in Georgia from 2005 to 2006.
Mark is Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He served as the inaugural Ronald D. Asmus nonresident policy fellow at the German Marshall Fund. He speaks Russian and holds degrees from Georgetown and Miami University. An Ohio native, Mark lives with his family in the Washington, DC area.
