Thorben Albrecht is the Policy Director of IG Metall, the German metalworkers' trade union. His responsibilities include strategies and policies as well as representing the interests of IG Metall’s more than 2 million members vis a vis political institutions in Berlin and Brussels. He has been a member of the “Global Commission on the Future of Work” established by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as well as a State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, where he issued a White Paper “Work 4.0” with policy recommendations on the future of work. His career also includes working for the Social Democratic Party of Germany  and for the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB).

Thorben Albrecht is a member of the board at the Hans-Böckler-Foundation, of the advisory council at the Work & Environment Foundation of the IG BCE and a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce“ (FRSA). twitter.com/ThorbenAlbrecht

Katarina Barley has been Vice-President of the European Parliament since July 2019. From March 2018 to June 2019 she was Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection. Barley previously held the office of Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. Between 2015 and 2017 she was General Secretary of the SPD, after which she has been a member of the party executive since December 2017. Before her activities at federal and EU level, Katarina Barley worked for several years in Rhineland-Palatinate - here she was a member of the Schweich city council, from 2005 to 2016 a member of the SPD district executive in Trier-Saarburg and since 2010 district chairwoman.

Julia Bläsius has been Head of the FES Consulting Department since 2021. Previously, she was Head of the FES offices in the South Caucasus, the FES regional project Belarus & Eastern Partnership and a GIZ regional fund in the Eastern Partnership countries, based in Ukraine. Her focus is on social justice, socio-ecological transformation and democracy development. She studied political economy at the London School of Economics and foreign languages, economic and cultural area studies at the University of Passau.

Nana Brink is moderator of the country report of the Deutschlandfunk Kultur since 2017. Previously, Brink had already gone through many different stages in Deutschlandfunk. Among other things, she has worked as a reporter and presenter on security policy since 1998 and, between December 2013 and January 2014, deputized the US correspondent in Washington. In addition to her work for Deutschlandfunk, she works as a moderator for parties, foundations and ministries. As a freelance author, she deals with the topics of security and foreign policy as well as the USA.

Nana Brink has been deputy chairwoman of Women in International Security Deutschland e.V. (WIIS) from 2005 to 2011 and since 2021.

Sabine Fandrych studied Political Science, Ethnology and Portuguese Linguistics at LMU Munich. She received her PhD from the Institute for Political Sciences at the University of Hamburg in 2000. Between 2000 and 2007 she was among others head of the office of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) in Angola as well as a consultant for organizational development and reintegration policy at giz. From 2007 to 2010 Ms. Fandrych headed the FES office in Ethiopia and at the African Union. In 2010 she joined the field of FES’s activities in Germany as the head of the FES office in Baden-Wuerttemberg. From 2017 to 2021 she headed FES’s Division of the Political Academy in Bonn. Since July 2021 she has been a member of the Executive Board and Secretary General of FES.

Liana Fix is a historian and political scientist focusing on German foreign policy, European Eastern European and Russian policy, and transatlantic relations. She is a Program Manager in the International Policy Division of the Körber Foundation and was a Resident Fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, DC, from January to March 2022, and previously an Associate Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, and a Fellow of the Mercator Kolleg. Dr. Liana Fix received her PhD on the topic of European-Russian relations and is the author of the book "Germany's Role in European Russia Policy: A New German Power?" to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2021. She is a member of the extended board of Woman in International Security.

Marcel Fratzscher is a researcher, author, and columnist on economic and socio-political topics, President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), and Professor of Macroeconomics at Humboldt University Berlin. Among other things, he is a member of the UN High-level Advisory Board on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a member of the Advisory Board of the German Federal Ministry of Economics, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Hertie School of Governance.

His work focuses on macroeconomics and financial markets, inequality, and the globalization and integration of Europe. He is a columnist for Zeit Online and regularly publishes commentaries in German and international media such as the Financial Times and Project Syndicate.

Prof. Dr. Maja Göpel is the bestselling author ("Rethinking Our World") and Honorary Professor for Sustainability Transformations at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She has been working as a Political Economist, Transformation Expert and Sustainability Scientist at the Interface of Science, Politics and Society for 25 years. She was most recently Scientific Director at The New Institute and Secretary General of the German scientific Advisory Council on Global environmental Change (WBGU).

Prof. Dr. Maja Göpel is member of the Club of Rome, the World Future Council, the Balaton Group, the German Bioeconomy Council and co-founder of the "Scientists for Future" (S4F) initiative.

Valeska Hesse is Head of the Latin America and Caribbean department of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation since 2019. Previously she worked for the FES in Mexico, Central America and Indonesia and managed a regional laborunion project based in Bratislava and worked as a consultant for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in New York. As part of a German-French double degree, she studied political science at the Otto Suhr Institute at Freie Universität and the Institut d'Études Politiques (Science Po) in Berlin and Paris. She is a graduate of the 41st postgraduate course of the German Development Institute.

Mikko Huotari is the Executive Director of MERICS. His research focuses on China’s foreign policy, China-Europe relations and global (economic) governance and competition. He has published on China’s rise as a financial power, trade and investment relations with Europe as well as on geopolitical shifts related to China's emergence as a global security actor.

Mikko studied in Freiburg, Nanjing and Shanghai. He holds a PhD from Freiburg University and was a guest scholar at the University of California in San Diego in 2017/2018. In 2019, Mikko was appointed as one of 15 German representatives to the German-Chinese Dialogue Forum.

Christos Katsioulis heads the Regional Office for Cooperation and Peace of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Vienna. Previously, he was Resident Representative of the FES offices in London, Athens and Brussels.

Lars Klingbeil has been leader of the SPD since December 2021. Previously, he was Secretary General of his party from 2017 to 2021. During this time, Klingbeil organized the coalition negotiations and initiated all renewal processes. He has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2009 and is a deputy member of the Defense Committee, in which he primarily supports the soldiers and the modernization of the bases in his region. From 2014 to 2018, Lars Klingbeil was chairman of all Lower Saxony and Bremen MPs in the SPD parliamentary group. Before that, he was shaped by a long and intensive period in local politics.

Lars Klingbeil studied political science, sociology and history in Hanover.

Christine Lambrecht has been Federal Minister of Defense since December 8, 2021. She was previously Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection from 2019 to 2021 and has also headed the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth since May 2021. Lambrecht studied law in Mannheim and Mainz.

Claudia Major is head of the Security Policy Research Group at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin. Her research areas are the EU, Europe, Security & Defense Policy, German Defense Policy, Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP), NATO, Security and Defense Policy, and Armed Forces and Military. Major has been a member of the "Advisory Council on Civilian Crisis Prevention" of the German Foreign Office since 2010 and a lecturer at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques/Sciences Po Paris since 2006.

Carlo Masala holds a PhD in political science and has been Professor of International Politics at the Universität der Bundeswehr Munich since 2007. After a substitute professorship at the Geschwister-Scholl-Institute of the LMU-Munich in 2004, he moved to the Research Department of the NATO Defense College in Rome. There he was initially Research Advisor, and from 2006 Deputy Director.
Visiting professorships and research stays have taken him to the USA, Great Britain, Slovakia, Italy and the Eastern Mediterranean University in Cyprus.
Masala is co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Politik (ZfP), the Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen (ZIB) and the Zeitschrift für Strategische Analysen (ZfSA). He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Federal Academy for Security Policy, the NATO Defence College, and the Clausewitz Society.

Dr. Matthias Miersch has been Deputy Chairman of the SPD parliamentary group for environment, climate protection, energy, agriculture and consumer protection since December 2021. From 2009 to 2017, he was Environmental Policy Spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group. Miersch has been chairman of the SPD district in Hanover since June 2019. In addition, he has been Spokesman for the Parliamentary Left in the SPD parliamentary group since 2015 and has been a member of the SPD party executive since November 2013.

Matthias Miersch has been a member of the Chamber for Sustainable Development of the Evangelical Church in Germany since September 2016. He is also a member of NABU, Naturfreunde Deutschlands e.V., AWO and Johanniter Unfallhilfe.

Jana Puglierin has been the Head of ECFR’s Berlin office and a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations since January 2020. She also directs ECFR’s Re:shape Global Europe project.

Before joining ECFR, Puglierin headed the Alfred von Oppenheim Center for European Policy Studies at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). Prior to this, she was an advisor on disarmament, arms control, and non-proliferation in the German Bundestag. In November 2017, Puglierin was a visiting fellow at the American-German Situation Room, a joint initiative of the AICGS and GMF. 

She is a board member of the German Atlantic Society and a member of the extended board of Women in International Security.

Martin Schulz, who is a Member of the 19th German Bundestag, has been President of the FriedrichEbert-Stiftung e.V. since 14 December 2020. He was previously the Party Chairman of the SPD, the chancellorship candidate and a long-time Member of the European Parliament, where he served as President for two terms from 2012 to 2017. Martin Schulz is also a Charlemagne Prize laureate, which was conferred to him in recognition of his outstanding contribution to strengthening the European Parliament and democratic legitimacy in the EU.

Svenja Schulze has been Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) since December 2021. Previously, she was Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. From 2017 to 2018, Schulze was Secretary General of the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia. She has been politically active in North Rhine-Westphalia since 1993. First as State Chairwoman of the Jusos, then as a Member of the State Executive Board of North Rhine-Westphalia, Member of the State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia and Minister for Innovation, Science and Research of the state.

Prof. Dr. Daniela Schwarzer is Executive Director, Europe and Eurasia at the Open Society Foundations. She was Director of DGAP from November 2016 to April 2021.

Previously, Schwarzer was Director of Research on the Board of Directors of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. From 2005 she worked for SWP for eight years and headed the European Integration research group from 2008 to 2013. During this time, she advised the Polish and French EU Council Presidencies and was a scientific advisor at the French Prime Minister's Center d'Analyse Stratégique.

In 2014, Daniela Schwarzer was appointed Senior Research Professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Frans Timmermans is Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, leading its work on the European Green Deal. He is responsible for the implementation of the Green Deal and the first European climate law, which enshrines the goal of climate neutrality by 2050 in EU law. He is also working on the expansion of the Emissions Trading Scheme, coordinating the work on the Just Transition Fund and developing the Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 und the circular economy.

From 2014-2019 Frans Timmermans was First Vice-President of the EU Commission and prior to this, the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs and Dutch Minister of European Affairs.

Dr. Nathalie Tocci is Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, Honorary Professor at the University of Tübingen and Pierre Keller Visiting Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School. She has been Special Advisor to EU High Representative and Vice President of the Commission Josep Borrell. As Special Advisor to HRVP Federica Mogherini she wrote the European Global Strategy and worked on its implementation. She has been a member of Eni's Board of Directors since May 2020. Previously she held research positions at the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, the Transatlantic Academy, Washington and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Florence.

Her research interests include European foreign policy, conflict resolution, the Middle East and the Mediterranean.