Norbert Schellberg was born in Duisburg in 1960. He spent his childhood in Otjiwarongo/Namibia, where his parents worked as a head couple in a German-speaking boarding school. He is a founding member of the Green Party in the district association of Mülheim an der Ruhr.

The political scientist has lived in Berlin since 1984 and is involved with the Berlin Greens (at that time still Alternative List for Democracy and Environmental Protection). In the 1990s, he was the party's state director and later a member of the Berlin House of Representatives. From 1999 to 2007 he worked in various functions for the Green parliamentary group in the Bundestag, advising the parliamentary group executive during the Red-Green government. Today, he works for an association of companies in the pharmaceutical industry as a senior consultant for economic policy.