Steering Group

Dr. Norbert Röttgen has been a Member of the German Parliament since 1994. He served as Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee until 2021.

From 2009-2012, he was Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. During his political career, Dr. Röttgen has fulfilled key functions within the Christian Democratic Party (CDU), including as chief whip of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group from 2005 to 2009. Dr. Röttgen holds a PhD in Law from Bonn University. He is a Senior Fellow at the Hertie School of Governance Berlin.

Edmond Alphandéry is the founder and Chairman of the Euro 50 Group which gathers leading personalities concerned with the European Central Bank’s monetary policy.

A Board member of ENGIE (former GDF SUEZ), he is the President of its Strategic Committee. Edmond Alphandéry is also a Senior Advisor at Banque Nomura France. He attends the Consultative Committee of the Banque de France.

From 1993-1995 he worked as a Minister of the Economy of France. From 1998 to 2012, Mr. Alphandéry served as chairman of CNP Assurances, and prior to this appointment, he was chairman of Electricité de France (EDF).

Edmond Alphandéry is the author of numerous articles and books devoted to economic and monetary affairs.

David Simon was Group Chief Executive at BP plc between 1992 and 1995 and Chairman between 1995 and 1997. In May 1997, he was appointed Minister of State in H.M. Treasury and Minister for Trade and Competitiveness in Europe in Tony Blair’s first government.

He retired from ministerial office and the Lords Front Bench in 1999 to become adviser to the Cabinet Office. He was also appointed by President Prodi to be one of the three man team advising on the impact of Enlargement of the European Union, having served in the Competitiveness Council for the EU under President Carlo Ciampi’s Chairmanship.

David Simon was Deputy Chairman of the Unilever Group from 2006-2009. He has also been non-executive director of the Bank of England, RTZ, Grandmet and Engie (formerly GDF Suez). He is a past member of the Advisory Boards of Deutsche Bank, Allianz, Fortis and LEK, and has sat on the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen AG. He is currently an Advisory Board member of Dana Gas and Montrose Associates.

Michael Maclay is Executive Chairman of London-based Montrose Associates, which provides strategic intelligence and advice to international corporations and governmental agencies. He was a professional diplomat, serving in West Africa, at the British Mission to the United Nations in New York, and in the Foreign Office.

Michael Maclay then became a television producer and presenter, and a journalist and editor on a number of newspapers. He subsequently served as Special Adviser to British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. Following the Dayton Agreement, the framework for peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he worked in Sarajevo with Carl Bildt, International High Representative for Bosnia, as his Special Adviser and Chief Spokesman. His publications include Multi-Speed Europe (Chatham House, 1992), Maastricht Made Simple (The European, 1993), and the Pocket History of the European Union (Sutton, 1998).

He is also Chairman of the Advisory Board of the British American Project, and was for twelve years Chairman of the Citizenship Foundation, a British educational and participation NGO, and now sits on its Advisory Council.

Rowan Barnett is Head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Germany. He was previously a Senior Director at Twitter where he was responsible for strategic market development in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Russia, as well as leading Twitter’s efforts in its emerging markets such as Turkey and Israel.

He led teams in Berlin, San Francisco and Amsterdam focused on driving user growth through partnerships, working with influencers and organisations across all areas of media, politics, TV, sport and entertainment.

Rowan Barnett is also a member of the Jury of the Raif Badawi Award, Mentor at Seedcamp and Quadriga Hochschule, Chapter Chair of H2 and served for a number of years as the speaker of the jury for the Axel Springer Prize for Young Journalists.

Prior to joining Twitter in 2012, he was Head of Community and Social Media at BILD.de. In 2008, he launched and managed the English language news site, BILD.com, having previously founded The AvaStar, the pioneering BILD newspaper for the virtual world of Second Life, as well as the online launch of the successful BILD “Citizen Reporter” project.

Sarah Raine is an independent consultant and researcher, writing on issues of geopolitics and security. Based in Berlin, she is a Senior Consulting Fellow for the International Institute of International Studies (IISS), working with both their Europe and Asia programmes.  In this capacity, she has written three books and published numerous articles focused on European and Asian politics.

Sarah also runs a private client consulting business. This includes working as Head of European Political Strategy for the FX arm of the financial services firm COEX.

She began her career working in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), during which time she was posted to the Balkans. Subsequently, she worked in Singapore as IISS’s Research Fellow for Chinese Foreign and Security Policy. Sarah holds an MPhil in International Relations and a MA in History (First Class) from Cambridge University.

Marie-Hélène Bérard is President and founder of MHB SAS, an independent investment/consulting firm based in Paris, specialising in corporate transactions in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, established in 2000. From 1990-2000, she was appointed to the management board of Crédit Commercial de France focusing on project finance, export credit, M&A and privatisation matters.

She previously was an adviser to two French Prime Ministers, M. Raymond Barre then M. Jacques Chirac, on issues of social welfare, employment, immigration, trade union relations and health.

Marie-Hélène is Director of the Russian investment fund HALCYON; Chairperson of the French Friends of the Ben Gurion University of the Negev; Director of the Canadian mining company Orea; and Treasurer of the Chirac Foundation.

She is Commandeur de la Légion d’honneur.

John Williams was appointed CEO of The Institute of Leadership & Management in September 2020, having previously held a number of CEO and Director positions in the UK, Middle East and Far East.

John is an Advisory Board member for the Commonwealth Enterprise & Investment Council, and has been a consultant to the UN International Trade Centre. He has been a Diversity Champion for the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, and an adviser to the Cabinet Office on strategy and leadership (UK). He is a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on International Trade & Investment, and Chaired the SME Trade & Investment Forum alongside the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

John has been a guest lecturer on Strategy and International Business at universities in the UK and Europe for many years, and occasionally writes about business for online publications.

Wolfgang Ischinger has been the Chairman of the Munich Security Conference since 2008. He is also Senior Professor of Security Policy and Diplomatic Practice at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. He advises governments and companies on strategic policy issues, and serves on the boards of a number of foundations, think tanks and companies.

Wolfgang Ischinger is a German career diplomat, having served, inter alia, as State Secretary (deputy foreign minister) in Bonn/Berlin (1998-2001) and as Ambassador to the US (2001-2006) and to the UK (2006-2008). He represented the EU in the Kosovo troika process (2007) and the OSCE Chairman-in-Office in the Ukraine crisis (2014).

In 2015, he chaired the ‘Panel of Eminent Persons’ mandated by the OSCE Troika to develop proposals for more resilient European security architecture.

Dr. Michael Schaefer served for 35 years in the German Foreign Service. He was German Ambassador the People’s Republic of China between 2007 and 2013.

After a series of postings at the United Nations in New York from 1981 to 1984, he served as Permanent Representative of the German Embassy to Singapore from 1987 to 1991, and as head of the Political Affairs Section at the German Permanent Mission to the Office of the United Nations in Geneva from 1995 to 1999. From 1999 to 2002, Dr. Michael Schaefer was head of the Western Balkans Task Force and subsequently Deputy Political Director and Special Envoy for Southeast Europe at the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. From 2002 to 2007, he served as Political Director of the Federal Foreign Office.

After his diplomatic career, he was Chairman of the BMW Foundation and Herbert Quandt until 2020. Among other distinguished positions, he is co-founder and member of the Supervisory Board of Alliance4Europe; honorary professor at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing; member of the Advisory Board of the Sino-German Center at Goethe University Frankfurt; board member of the United Nations Association of Germany (DGVN); and member of the Commission on Global Security, Justice & Governance.

Professor Margarita Mathiopoulos is a German entrepreneur, political scientist and historian, and an honorary politician of the German Liberal Party FDP. From 2002-2011 she was a foreign policy advisor to the Chairman of the FDP, Guido Westerwelle.

In 2001, she co-founded ASPIDE Technology Group and has since been its CEO. Margarita Mathiopoulos also serves as a senior advisor to multiple global industries as well as political leaders in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Prior in her business career, she served in senior management positions including Senior Advisor on European and North American markets to the CEO of BAE Systems in London; at Norddeutsche Landesbank in Hannover, at IBM Germany in Stuttgart, and as Associate Director of the ASPEN Institute Berlin.

Professor Mathiopoulos has been teaching US Foreign Policy since 1988 when she started her academic career as lecturer at the Free University of Berlin. She was the first Western DAAD Guest Professor at Humboldt University in April 1990; she has lectured at Stanford Univ. and the Univ. of Hannover, has served as an Honorary Professor at the Technical Univ. of Braunschweig and at Potsdam Univ., and as a Visiting Professor within the Dept. of Diplomacy at the China Foreign Affairs Univ. in Beijing.

She has published numerous articles on the transatlantic relationship, NATO, US-Russian-European and US-Chinese-Russian security affairs, and about a new world order. She has also written seven books, among them the bestseller “The End of the Bonn Republic”. She lives and works in London and Berlin.

Adair Turner has been Chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking since April 2015, where he was a Senior Fellow from 2013-15 and during which time he wrote his book Between Debt and the Devil – Money, Credit and Fixing Global Finance (Princeton 2015).

Prior to that he chaired the UK Financial Services Authority (2008-13) and played a leading role in the redesign of the global banking and shadow banking regulation as Chairman of the International Financial Stability Board’s major policy committee.

Lord Turner has combined a business career with public policy and academia. He led the McKinsey practice in East Europe and Russia and was Vice-Chairman of Merrill Lynch Europe (2000-06). He became a cross-bench member of the House of Lords in 2005, served as the first Chairman of the Climate Change Committee (2008-12), and chaired the Pensions Commission (2003-06) and the Low Pay Commission (2002-06).

Jean-David Levitte is Senior Policy Advisor at Rock Creek Global Advisors, an international economic policy advisory firm, where he focuses on European policy. He is also a distinguished fellow with the Foreign Policy program at Brookings.

His career as a French diplomat includes serving as senior diplomatic advisor and sherpa to President Nicolas Sarkozy. From 2002-2007, he was the Ambassador of France to the United States and the French permanent representative to the United Nations from 2000-2002.

After the presidential elections in 1995, President Jacques Chirac asked Ambassador Levitte to be his senior diplomatic advisor and sherpa. He served in that position from 1995-2000.

Anne-Elisabeth Moutet is a columnist for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph (London) and a frequent contributor to the BBC and the Weekly Standard. She comments on the week’s news on ARTE television’s 28 Minutes talk show in Paris, and is also a regular guest on France Info radio and BFM News television.

Anne-Elisabeth is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Gatestone Institute and sits on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Europe. She is a co-founder and vice-president of the Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Paris.

In the past, she was a foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times (London), Paris Bureau Chief for The European, and France Editor for Newsweek Europe.

August Hanning is Chairman of Pluteos AG. He served as State Secretary in the Federal Interior Ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany in Berlin between 2005 and 2009, and President of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) between 1998 and 2005.

In 1986, he became a top diplomat and was assigned Head of the Division at the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in Berlin. There, he was responsible for diplomatic engagements between the two sides.

In 1990, August Hanning continued his career at the Federal Chancellery and became Head of Division. In 1994 he became team leader, and in 1996 Director-General. During his time as Director-General, he was responsible for the coordination of the federal intelligence services of Germany.

Charles Powell (Lord Powell of Bayswater) was for many years private secretary and adviser on foreign affairs and defence to Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister and held the same position in the early part of John Major’s time as Prime Minister.

Since 1992 he has served on the boards and advisory boards of many international companies and was for many years chairman of the China-Britain Business Council.

He chairs the Trustees of the Oxford University Business School and the British Museum Trust. He is a Trustee of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Aspen Institute and serves on the International Advisory Board of the New York Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a Foundation Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford and an honorary Fellow of the Ashmolean Museum.

Charles Powell is an independent member of the House of Lords and currently serves on the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy.

Bernard Spitz is Chairman, International and Europe, at the MEDEF, the French Employers’ organisation. He was previously President of the French Federation of Insurance (FFA), which was established in July 2016 and brings together the French Federation of Insurance Companies (FFSA) and the Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (GEMA). FFA represents 280 insurance and reinsurance companies operating in France, covering 99% of the market.

He also currently chairs the Club des Juristes Commission on Cyber Risks launched in September 2016.

At MEDEF, Bernard Spitz has been in charge of the organisation’s work on the Social Agenda of the B20 – the international summit of business leaders and employers – since the French Presidency of the G20 in 2011. He coordinated the first Joint Declaration of Employers and Workers, respectively represented by the B20 and the L20, the International Labour Unions Summit.

He sits on the boards of several European think tanks: En Temps Réel, Aspen, Glocus, The Lisbon Council. He is a founding member of Les Gracques, a centre-left reformist think tank. A former Rapporteur at the Competition Council of France, and a member of the Council of State, he was a Special Adviser to Prime Minister Michel Rocard (1988-1991). Bernard Spitz was also Head of Strategy at Vivendi Universal Group between 2000 and 2004.

Since October 2000, Andrew has been the Senior Adviser to Mitsubishi Corporation Europe. He has been a Board Director of Mitsubishi Corporation International (Europe) Plc (MCIE) since 2013.

For six years, July 1994 – September 2000, Andrew served as Chief Executive of Invest UK – the sole Government body marketing the whole of the UK to international investors – during which time the stock of UK inward investment more than doubled. Prior to that, he enjoyed an extensive career in international advertising as Director of Business Development for Saatchi and Saatchi Worldwide and CEO of the Dentsu network in Europe.

His pro bono commitments have included serving as a Trustee for Shakespeare’s Globe and for the Club of Three, the Board of Think London, the Council of Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs) and the Board of the Japan Society (UK) where he continues to chair the Business Group.

Serge Weinberg has been Chairman of the Board of Sanofi since May 2010.

After various senior positions in the French civil service, he became Chief of Staff to the French Budget Minister in 1981. He then served as Deputy General Manager in charge of finance at television station FR3, and as Chief Executive Officer of Havas Tourisme. After three years as CEO of Pallas Finance, Serge Weinberg joined the Pinault Group in 1990 as Chairman and CEO of CFAO. He remained with the Pinault Group as Chairman and CEO of Rexel and then became Chairman of the Management Board of the PPR Group, a position he held for 10 years. In 2005, he founded an investment company Weinberg Capital Partners specialised in private equity and real estate.

Serge Weinberg was also Chairman of the Board of Accor from 2006 to 2009 and Member of the Supervisory Board of Schneider Electric (2005-2014). He is a board member of the Association Française des Entreprises Privées and a member of the Foreign Affairs Council.