Gerald Braunberger
Publisher, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Born in 1960 in Bad Homburg. After completing a banking apprenticeship and a degree in economics, he joined in 1988 the business desk of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. From 1995 to 2004, Gerald Braunberger worked as a correspondent in Paris. After three years at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (the Sunday edition of the newspaper), he worked from 2007 to 2019 as a financial editor at the F.AZ. He has been a publisher at the FAZ since 2019.
Pierre-Oliver Gourinchas
Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department, IMF
Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas is the Economic Counsellor and the Director of Research of the IMF. He is on leave from the University of California at Berkeley where he is the S.K. and Angela Chan Professor of Global Management in the Department of Economics and at the Haas School of Business. He is the laureate of the 2007 Bernàcer Prize for best European economist working in macroeconomics and finance under the age of 40, and of the 2008 Prix du Meilleur Jeune Economiste for best French economist under the age of 40. He attended Ecole Polytechnique and received his PhD in Economics in 1996 from MIT.
Lion Hirth
Prof. of Energy Policy, Hertie School
Lion Hirth is Professor of Energy Policy at Hertie School, a Berlin-based public policy school. He is an energy economist and expert in renewables, electricity markets, and energy policy. Lion was a member of Germany’s gas commission and has advised clients across the private and public sectors, including the German government, the International Energy Agency, the European Commission, and numerous European transmission system operators, utilities and commodity traders. Lion holds a Ph.D. and a Diploma in economics, a Magister Artium in political science and has five years industry experience. His academic articles are published in the top energy economics and engineering journals, have won several awards and are among the most cited in the field, and he regularly comments on energy on news and social media.
Uwe Hochgeschurtz
COO Region Enlarged Europe, Stellantis
Uwe Hochgeschurtz was appointed Chief Operating Officer for Enlarged Europe in June 2022 and has served as a member of Stellantis’ Top Executive Team since September 2021. Previously, he was Brand Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for Opel and Vauxhall, a position he held since joining Stellantis in September 2021. Hochgeschurtz has more than 30 years of experience in the automotive industry. He started his career at Ford in 1990, where he held various management roles. For example, he was Sales Director for Ford Switzerland and Product Manager and Head of LCV Marketing in Germany. In 2001, he moved to VW as Head of Worldwide Marketing LCV. Three years later, he moved to Renault, where he worked in sales, marketing and product planning before being appointed CEO of Renault Germany, Austria and Switzerland in June 2016.
Lars Klingbeil
Co-Chair of the SPD, Member of the Bundestag
Political career
• Since December 2021 Co-Chair of the SPD
• 2017 to 2021 General Secretary of the SPD Executive Committee
• 2013 to 2017 Chairperson of the Lower Saxony/Bremen federal state committees for the SPD parliamentary group
• 2013 to 2017 Network Policy Spokesperson der SPD parliamentary group
• Since 2009 Member of the Bundestag (Rotenburg I/Heidekreis constituency)
• 2003 to 2007 deputy Federal Chairperson of the Jusos, the Working Group of Young Socialists in the SPD
Curriculum vitae
• 2001 to 2003 Employee in the office of German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Heino Wiese
• 1999 to 2004 Studied social science
• 1998 to 1999 Alternative community service at the railway station mission in Hanover
• 1998 school leaving examination (Abitur)
Memberships (Excerpt)
Social Democratic Party of German (SPD); IG BCE (mining, chemical and energy workers trade union); Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO); Freiwillige Feuerwehr Munster; Verkehrswacht Munster-Bispingen e.V.; Verein Sprungbrett e.V.; Verein der Förderer und Ehemaligen des Gymnasiums Munster e.V.; Kreispräventionsrat Heidekreis; Verein zur Verbesserung der Bildungschancen im Landkreis Heidekreis; Sozialverband Deutschland (SoVD); D64 – Zentrum für Digitalen Fortschritt; Lions Club Munster.
Christian Kullmann
Chairman of the Executive Board, Evonik Industries AG
Christian Kullmann has been Chairman of the Executive Board of the Essen-based specialty chemicals group Evonik since 2017, having previously been its Chief Strategy Officer since 2014. Under his leadership, the company, which employs around 34,000 people worldwide, was strategically realigned and now focuses systematically on high-margin specialty chemicals. For more than 30 months, until September 2022, Kullmann led the German Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industry Association (VCI) as president.
Before joining Evonik, Kullmann held various positions at Dresdner Bank in Frankfurt until 2003. An economic historian, he was born in Gelsenkirchen on March 14, 1969, is married and has two daughters.
Hildegard Müller
President, Verband der Automobilindustrie
Hildegard Müller, born in 1967, has been President of the VDA since February 1, 2020. Previously, she was Member of the Executive Board for Grid & Infrastructure at innogy SE, Chairwoman of the Executive Board of BDEW between 2008 and 2016, and Minister of State to the German Chancellor from 2005 to 2008. From October 2002 to September 2008, she was a member of the German Bundestag and from March 1995 to September 2008, she was a department director at Dresdner Bank AG.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Reimund Neugebauer
Chairman of the Committee for European Union Affairs, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, Member of the Bundestag
Professor Reimund Neugebauer has been President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft since 2012. After studying mechanical engineering at Technische Universität Dresden (TUD), where he obtained his doctorate in 1984 and his postdoctoral lecturing qualification (Habilitation) in 1991, he was appointed as a university lecturer at TUD in 1989. Subsequently, he became executive director of the Institute of Machine Tools in 1990. From 1994 until 2012 Prof. Neugebauer was director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology. From 2000 to 2012 he held the position of managing director of
the Institute for Machine Tools and Production Processes at Chemnitz University of Technology (TU Chemnitz), as well as the position of dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering from 2003 to 2006. Since 2022, Prof. Neugebauer has been a member of the German Chancellor’s Future Council.
Güther H. Oettinger
President, United Europe e.V.
Günther H. Oettinger served as European Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources from January 2017 to November 2019. From November 2014 to December 2016, he held the office of European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, after having been European Commissioner for Energy from February 2010 to October 2014 and lastly also Vice-President of the European Commission in 2014. From 2005 to 2010, he was Prime Minister of the State of Baden-Württemberg (Germany) and since 1984 Member of its Landtag (state parliament). From January 1991 to April 2005, he was Chairperson of the CDU parliamentary group in the state parliament. A lawyer by training, Günther Oettinger became actively involved in politics during his adolescence.
Günther H. Oettinger has been President of United Europe since the beginning of 2020.
He served as European Commissioner for Budget & Human Resources from January 2017 to November 2019. From November 2014 to December 2016, he held office as European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society after being European Commissioner for Energy from February 2010 to October 2014 and lastly also Vice-President of the European Commission in 2014.
From 2005 to 2010, he was Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg (Germany) and, since 1984, a member of the regional Parliament (“Landtag”). He was the leader of the CDU Landtag group from January 1991 to April 2005.
A lawyer by training, Günther H. Oettinger became actively involved in politics during his adolescence. He is a member of the Federal Executive Committee and of the Steering Committee of the CDU Deutschlands.
Dr. Daniel Risch
Prime Minister of the Principality of Liechtenstein
Dr. Daniel Risch has been Prime Minister of the Principality of Liechtenstein since March 2021. Previously, he was Deputy Prime Minister from 2017 to 2021. Before entering politics, he was Chief Marketing Officer at Liechtensteinische Post AG and Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Consulting at Unic AG, an e-commerce consulting company, in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. From 1999-2003, he studied business administration at the universities of St. Gallen and Zurich and at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. Daniel Risch received his doctorate in 2007 from the University of Freiburg.
Prof. Jörg Rocholl, PhD
President, ESMT Berlin
Prof. Jörg Rocholl, PhD, is President of ESMT Berlin. Alongside this position, he is also Vice-Chairman of the Advisory Board to the Federal Ministry of Finance.
Jörg Rocholl completed a degree in economics at the University of Witten/Herdecke, graduating as a Diplom-Ökonom (with distinction). After receiving his PhD at Columbia University in New York, he was appointed as an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Since 2007, he has been conducting research and lecturing at the ESMT and was appointed as President in 2011. From 2010 to June 2019, he held the EY Chair in Governance und Compliance.
His research interests lie in the areas of corporate finance, corporate governance, financial intermediation, central banks, and financial regulation. His research has been published in leading specialist journals, including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies.
Jörg Rocholl is a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a research member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI), a research professor at the ifo Institute in Munich, Chairman of the Research Data and Service Centre (RDSC) at Deutsche Bundesbank, vice chairman of the economic advisory board at Deutsche Welle, a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of DIW Berlin (the German Institute for Economic Research), and a Member of the Advisory Board at the Public Governance Institute in Germany. In 2019 and 2020, he was Vice Chair of the Verein für Socialpolitik (German Economic Association) and previously both a Lamfalussy Fellow as well as a Duisenberg Fellow of the European Central Bank (ECB).