Lea Heursen works for the Palau Mission and does research on the cutting edge of economics and politics. She has studied political science with foci on international relations and international political economy and economics at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (France) and the University of California at Berkeley. Since the beginning of her university studies in 2006, she holds a scholarship of the German Academic Merit Foundation.
Prior to joining islandsfirst and the Palau mission, she has worked in diverse positions; for instance as a workshop leader for a German NGO,as a research assistant to an economics professor in Berkeley or a director of a student theatre group in France.