Since October 2008, Bente Aika Scheller is country director of HBS Afghanistan. Before joining HBS, she spent two years working for the German foreign office at the German embassy in Damascus, Syria taking care of political affairs. Later on, she worked as senior program officer for Syria at the Aspen Institute Berlin. Ms Scheller specializes in foreign and security policy and holds a PhD in political science from Free University of Berlin where she also did Arabic, Spanish and Latin American studies.

Bente Scheller frequently comments on current affairs in the German media. In 2009 and 2011, she did a conflict portrait of Afghanistan for the Federal Center for Political Education (www.bpb.de ) in Germany in 2009. She represented HBS Kabul in the World Economic Forum in Krynica (www.forum-ekonomiczne.pl/433,19th+Economic+Forum ) in 2009 as moderator of the Afghanistan panel and she participated in the German Marshall Fund's (www.gmfus.org ) prestigious Brussels Forum (www.brusselsforum.org ) in March 2010 and 2011."