Silke Vera Maria Schmitt is Country Director of the Hanns Seidel Foundation Italy/Vatican in Rome. She was born in Germany on the Moselle, in the heart of Europe and near Schengen. She studied Sociology, Media, and Communication Sciences in Marburg and Rome. In 2013, she completed a Master’s Degree in “Experts in Politics and International Relations” at the University LUMSA in Rome. As a journalist, she worked in the German section of Radio Vatican and at the news agency KNA. From 2008 to October 2021, she worked as a Research Assistant in the foreign office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Rome.