Klaus Linsenmeier is the Interim Executive Director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Washington, DC. He holds a Master of Arts in Economics (Dipl. rer. pol.) from the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg/Breisgau and studied Enterprise Promotion at Cranfield School of Management (UK) and Business Administration (MBA) at the University of Hagen/University of Wales. He is partner in a German family-owned mid-size company.
Klaus started his professional career in the private business sector before joining Medico International in Frankfurt, a German human rights NGO, as program-coordinator and later managing director. Further steps in his career were closely related to the development of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which he joined in 1989. Before moving to Washington in 2009, Klaus was Director of the Foundation’s International Division in Berlin, where he supervised the Foundation’s thirty international offices. After leaving the Washington office in 2014, Klaus directed the Heinrich Böll Foundation EU office in Brussels until 2018, and the Prague office in 2019. Since 2020 he has been a visiting lecturer at University Rostock.
His fields of expertise are: Foreign and Security Policy; German and European Policy, US Politics, Development and Globalization; Environment; and Democracy Promotion. He frequently publishes on these topics.