Team

Benedikt Haerlin

Head of Office

Benedikt Haer­lin has over 30 years of expe­ri­ence in the area of GMOs. As an MEP, he helped to draft the EU’s first GMO reg­u­la­tions. He then launched Green­peace’s glob­al GMO cam­paign and rep­re­sent­ed the organ­i­sa­tion in the cre­ation of the Carta­ge­na Pro­to­col on Biosafe­ty and in the UN’s IAASTD assess­ment. He also found­ed sev­er­al Ger­man and Euro­pean seed and farm­ing ini­tia­tives, includ­ing Save Our Seeds and the 2000m² ’glob­al fields’ (‘Weltäck­er’) ini­tia­tive.

Guy Reeves

Guy Reeves

Sci­en­tif­ic Advi­sor

Guy Reeves is an evo­lu­tion­ary geneti­cist with over 20 years of expe­ri­ence span­ning both the­o­ret­i­cal and applied research. Before join­ing Save Our Seeds in 2025, he worked on sci­ence pol­i­cy in the con­text of bio­log­i­cal weapons con­trol, and on the impli­ca­tions of self-sus­tain­ing biotech­nol­o­gy tech­niques for con­ser­va­tion efforts.

Franziska Achterberg

Head of Pol­i­cy

Franziska Achter­berg used to be a Green­peace cam­paign­er for 13 years, focus­ing on pes­ti­cides, GMOs and oth­er top­ics. Before join­ing Save Our Seeds in 2024, she spent four years with the Greens/EFA Group in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, work­ing on bio­di­ver­si­ty issues, includ­ing GMOs, forests and oceans.

Naomi Kosmehl

Alina Banse

Cam­paign Coor­di­na­tor

Ali­na Banse joined SOS as a cam­paign coor­di­na­tor since 2026. Pre­vi­ous­ly, she worked at the inter­sec­tion of sus­tain­able trans­for­ma­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, socio-eco­log­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty and envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion. She holds a bach­e­lor’s degree in social and eco­nom­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion and a mas­ter’s degree in geo­graph­i­cal devel­op­ment stud­ies, and is an edu­ca­tion con­sul­tant for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment.

Akiko Frid

Akiko Frid

Coor­di­na­tor GMO-free Regions

Akiko Frid has been involved in GMO cam­paigns since 1996. She par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Codex Ad Hoc Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Task Force on Foods Derived from Biotech­nol­o­gy (TFFDB) on behalf of Con­sumers Inter­na­tion­al, and worked on the Carta­ge­na Pro­to­col on Biosafe­ty on behalf of Green­peace Inter­na­tion­al. Akiko has been a GMO cam­paign­er with Green­peace Japan and Green­peace Swe­den. She joined the team in 2012 to organ­ise the GMO-free Europe con­fer­ences.

Would you like to support our work?

Do you want to help pro­tect our envi­ron­ment? Are you inter­est­ed in the work of a ded­i­cat­ed small NGO active­ly work­ing to pro­tect nature and health? Then you’re in the right place!

Save Our Seeds’ office in Berlin reg­u­lar­ly offers intern­ship and vol­un­teer posi­tions. Sim­ply send an email to .

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