Maryna Rakhlei is a senior program officer in GMF's office in Berlin, where she analyzes regional developments in Eastern Europe and is part of the team assisting civil society in Belarus. Before joining GMF, Rakhlei covered foreign relations for the Belarusian newswire Belapan in Minsk, and she maintains extensive contacts in the region. She also wrote for the German newswire DPA and blogged for EuObserver. She has studied linguistics in her hometown of Minsk and European studies in Berlin. Her working languages are English and German, in addition to her native Russian and Belarusian.