Melanie Levensohn was born in 1970 near Frankfurt, Germany, and studied international relations and literature in France and Chile. She earned her master’s degree from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. She later worked as a spokesperson for the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, and travelled to the most complex political hotspots around the world. She reported from Liberia during the civil war in 2003 and was based in Amman, Jordan, as a UN spokesperson during the Iraq war. From 2006–13 Melanie worked as a communications and media expert at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., where she managed corporate external relations for the Caribbean region with a special focus on reconstruction and development in Haiti after the devastating earthquake in 2010. She now lives in Geneva.