Heiko Wimmen is a Program Manager for the Middle East Office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. He received a Masters degree in Middle Eastern Studies at Freie Universität Berlin (1994), after which he worked for two years as an academic assistant at the German Orient Institute in Beirut.

He then moved on to become a producer and author for German print and broadcast media, reporting from Beirut until 2002, when he was awarded a two-year professional fellowship with  the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), split between a residence at the Hagop Kervorkian Center for Middle Eastern Studies at New York University and field research in Bosnia, Israel/Palestine and Lebanon for a project on "Coexistence in Divided Cities".

Heiko Wimmen joined the Middle East Office upon its inception in April 2004.