Dr. Daniela Lesmeister

After graduating from high school (1996), she completed training to become a police commissioner (with a degree in public administration). She then worked for several years as a police commissioner in Gelsenkirchen. While working as a police officer, she studied law at Ruhr University Bochum and completed her legal clerkship at the Kleve Regional Court. In 2008, she earned her doctorate (Opportunities and Limits of Police Prevention in the Area of Juvenile Crime—Illustrated by the Actual Example of the Gelsenkirchen Police Headquarters). In 2007, she joined the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Health, where her responsibilities included serving as deputy head of the Minister’s Office and as division director for forensic psychiatric care. From 2014 to 2017, she served as deputy director of the Department of Security and Justice for the City of Duisburg, which oversees the Legal Affairs Office, the Office of Citizens and Public Order, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Office of Foreigners, the Fire Department, the Staff Unit for Disaster and Civil Protection, the Staff Unit for Data Protection, the Office for District Affairs, and the “Problem Properties” Task Force. Since October 2017, she has served as the first woman to head the Police Department at the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of the Interior, making her the head of approximately 57,000 employees in the North Rhine-Westphalia Police Force. In her private life, Dr. Lesmeister is the founder of the association “I.S.A.R Germany e.V.” She served as its first chairperson until the association was dissolved in 2022. In March 2023, she also concluded her volunteer international work