Anna Lena Lesch studied Economics (B.Sc.) at the University of Mannheim and completed her Master's degree in Development Economics (M.Sc.) with a focus on quantitative methods at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. During her studies, she spent exchange semesters at Queen's University in Canada and Seoul National University in South Korea. She gained practical experience as a student assistant and intern in the field of environmental and climate economics at ZEW Mannheim, in consulting on sustainable cocoa production at ADE s.a. and as a field research assistant in Peru.

Anna Lena Lesch has been working as a research assistant at the Chair of Economic Policy and SME Research since April 2024. She is doing her doctorate at the Faculty of Economics and is currently conducting research on the green hydrogen transformation in the chemical industry. Her interests include energy economics, development economics and economic policy and their intersections. She would like to expand her methodological skills both quantitatively and qualitatively and is particularly interested in geospatial data analysis.