Dr. Bente Scheller became the director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation's Middle East office in Beirut in 2012, a position she took after directing the foundation's Afghanistan office in Kabul between 2008 and 2012. She holds a doctorate in political science at Freie Universität Berlin and specializes in Foreign and Security Policy. From 2002 to 2004 she worked at the German Embassy in Damascus, Syria. Later she took over the Berlin Aspen Institute's Syria program.