Helga Flores Trejo

Helga Flores Trejo has been the Executive Director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in North America since 2003. The Foundation is a leading German think-tank, headquartered in Berlin, with over 20 worldwide offices working to promote democracy, human rights, and environmental sustainability in more than 60 countries. She is an expert on German and U.S. foreign policy, EU affairs, the Balkans and immigration issues. As head of the Böll Foundation's North American operations in Washington, she focuses her work on global challenges confronting the United States and Europe, primarily regarding energy and climate change, engagement with China and Russia, and confronting fundamentalism in the Middle East, among others. Prior to leading the Foundation in Washington, Ms. Flores Trejo worked in the Balkans as Senior Advisor for the Parliamentary Support Program of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Mission in Belgrade. There, she directed a program to install parliamentary control and oversight of the military and security services in the region. Ms. Flores Trejo holds a Masters degree in Political Science and International Law from the Johann Wolfgang-Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. She was born and raised in Mexico, immigrated to Germany in 1989, and is a German citizen since 1997.