Dr. Tobias Rüttershoff has been Head of the Regional Program Security Policy Dialogue West Africa based in Abidjan/Côte d'Ivoire since February 2024. Previously, he headed the KAS Office in Albania from 2019 to 2023. Dr. Rüttershoff has been working for the Foundation since 2015, as a consultant for East Central Europe in the Europe/North America Department (2017-2019), and previously as a consultant in the Domestic Programs Team (2015-2017) of the EIZ. He is a former KAS scholarship holder and studied political science, public law and international relations at the Universities of Mannheim, Maastricht (NL) and Sheffield (UK) before completing his doctorate at the University of Exeter (UK) on a topic related to US security policy. He gained his first practical professional experience in the German Bundestag, at the Center for Internal Leadership of the German Armed Forces and as a research assistant at the University of Oxford. As an active reservist (Major d.R.), he is currently assigned to the German Armed Forces Command and Staff College in Hamburg.