Andreas Bartels, born on 4 May 1970, has been Senior Vice President and Head of Corporate Communi­cations at the Luft­hansa Group since 1 April 2016. Following his apprentice­ship as a bank clerk and earning a degree in literary and media studies, he began his career as an adviser for internal and external communi­cations at the Lower Saxony Savings Banks Asso­ciation (Nieder­sächsischer Spar­kassen- und Giro­verband) in Hanover in 1996. He has held various roles as a corporate spokes­person since 2000. From 2000 to 2001, he served as Manager of Public Relations and Spokes­person for Comdirect Bank AG in Hamburg. In 2002, he joined Deutsche Bank AG in Frankfurt, first as company spokes­person for the Private and Business Clients division, before becoming Head of Media Relations for that division in 2004. In 2007, he began his career at Deutsche Luft­hansa AG as Vice President and Head of Media Relations. In 2011, he took over as Head of Communi­cations for the Luft­hansa Passenger Airline division. Since 2016, Bartels has been respon­sible for the Luft­hansa Group’s global corporate communications.

Ingo Hatzmann, LL.M. (GWU), is a partner and General Counsel Germany at EY Germany. Since December 2021, he has been heading the legal depart­ment of EY’s German locations. Prior to that, from 2019 to 2021, he was General Counsel Germany (Branch) & Head of Legal Germany at BNP Paribas in Frankfurt. His career in the financial sector began in 2002 at Deutsche Bank AG, where he held various positions in Frankfurt and later at the New York branch, including as Executive Assistant to Dr Josef Ackermann. Hatzmann obtained his Master’s degree in Inter­national and Comparative Law from George Washington University Law School and qualified as a Certified Compliance Officer at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.

Wolfgang Kubicki is the Federal Chairman of the FDP. An economist and lawyer, he served as a Member of the German Bundes­tag from 1990 to 1992, in 2002 and again from 2017 to 2025. From 2017, he also served as Vice President of the Bundes­tag, making him a member of its presidium. Prior to that, he served as a member of the Schleswig-Holstein state parlia­ment for over 25 years, most of that time as leader of the FDP parlia­mentary group. He stood as the leading candidate in a total of seven state elections, during which he achieved the three best electoral results in his party’s history in Schleswig-Holstein. Kubicki also practises as a criminal defence lawyer in his own law firm.

Martina Link was born in Mainz in 1966. After studying at the Federal University of Applied Adminis­trative Sciences and gradua­ting with a degree in public adminis­tration, she began her career at the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in 1988. There, she initially worked in the Serious and Organised Crime Depart­ment in the areas of investi­gation and analysis, as well as on the BKA’s executive staff. After studying at the Police Leader­ship Academy, she took on managerial responsi­bilities as an adviser in the areas of Serious and Organised Crime, Financial Crime and inter­national police cooperation. Further positions took her to the Federal Ministry of the Interior and to the BKA’s Executive Staff, where she headed a press office. In 2013, she assumed leader­ship of the Criminal Institute division. From 2016, she served as head of the Operative Support for Deploy­ment and Investi­gations division. Since 2020, Martina Link has been Vice President of the Federal Criminal Police Office.

Christopher Piltz, 37, is an editor on the Germany desk at SPIEGEL. He primarily researches topics related to the justice system and society. From 2020 to 2021, he was a corres­pondent based in Magdeburg. Before joining SPIEGEL, he worked as an editor at “Neon” and as a reporter for “Geo.” He studied political science and economics in Göttingen and Istanbul.

Dr David Rieks is a partner at YPOG in Hamburg and heads the Corporate Crime, Compliance & Investi­gations practice group.
As a specialist lawyer in criminal law, he advises companies and decision-makers on procee­dings relating to commer­cial and tax criminal law, as well as on internal investi­gations. Previously, he led the German Corporate Crime & Investi­gations practice at Eversheds Suther­land and worked at ROXIN, a law firm specia­lising in commercial criminal law. David Rieks studied law in Freiburg, Florence and Berlin, completed his doctorate at Humboldt University Berlin, and holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Inter­national Criminal Law from Columbia University New York and the University of Amsterdam. His doctoral thesis, “Live Reporting from Criminal Trials: Twitter and live tickers between the principle of public access and court­room regu­lations” deals with media publicity in criminal procee­dings – a topic that takes on particular relevance in the context of the Hamburg Block Trial, in which David Rieks represents the accused former sports presenter Gerhard Delling, and in which court­room reporting has become a matter of special public interest.

Lieutenant General Kai Rohr­schneider, born on 4 March 1964 in Bochum, joined the Bundes­wehr in 1983. After training as a tank officer and studying economics and organi­sational sciences at the Bundes­wehr University Hamburg, graduating with a degree in business adminis­tration, he held numerous military command and staff positions in the Army and at the Federal Ministry of Defence. His career is defined by military leader­ship roles, both in troop command as commander of Armoured Battalion 393, Armoured Brigade 21 “Lipper­land,” and in Afghanistan, as well as five times as Chief of Staff, including at US Army Europe-Africa. At the Federal Ministry of Defence, he was respon­sible for the personnel manage­ment of generals and the opera­tional readiness of the armed forces. He gained inter­national experience in inte­grated assign­ments and at military academies. Since October 2024, Rohr­schneider has been serving in Ulm as Commander of the Allied Joint Support and Enabling Command (NATO) and simul­taneously as Commander of the Multi­national Joint Head­quarters (for EU operations). Broad societal resilience in the event of a possible mobili­sation forms part of the context of his current role.

Heiner Seidel has been responsible for communi­cation regarding litigation, crisis, and special topics at EY in Germany since 2021, and in this capacity advises the executive manage­ment on strategic communi­cation and reputation issues. Previously, he led communi­cation for Germany and Austria at the inter­national law firm Freshfields in Frankfurt for approxi­mately three years. Before that, he was press spokes­man at the Deutsche Börse and Eurex for many years, and was responsible for various strategic communi­cation projects.

Attorney-at-law and notary Dr Ulrich Wessels completed his legal studies in Freiburg and Münster. Following a professional stay abroad in London and the completion of his doctorate on the topic of “Executor Adminis­tration of a Limited Partner­ship Interest”, he has been admitted to the bar since 1988. He is a partner at the law firm Dr Koenig & Partner GbR in Münster, West­phalia. Since 1994, he has been a member of the board of the Hamm Bar Asso­ciation, served as its treasurer for several years and was President of the chamber from 2012 to November 2019. Since 2003, he has been a board member and treasurer of the German Lawyers’ Institute (Deutsches Anwalts­institut). In 2015, Ulrich Wessels was elected 2nd Vice President to the presidium of the BRAK. Since 14 September 2018, attorney-at-law and notary Dr Ulrich Wessels has been President of the BRAK.

Dr Hendrik Wieduwilt is an attorney-at-law and strategy consul­tant based in Hamburg. He writes the column “Wieduwilt’s Week” for ntv and regularly provides commen­tary on political events from a communi­cations perspective. He is co-host of the legal podcast “Gerechtig­keit und Lose­blatt” published by Beck-Verlag. Previously, Wieduwilt served as capital city corres­pondent for the Frank­furter Allgemeine Zeitung, where he was responsible for the “Law and Taxation” section, and as press spokes­person at the Federal Ministry of Justice. He also presented a programme on legal issues for ZDF as part of a crime series.

Silvia Ates, LL.M., is a strategic communi­cations consul­tant specia­lising in crisis situa­tions and reputation-sensitive contexts. She is a law gradutae and a certified crisis communi­cations manager. Combining her consul­tancy experience with her inter­nationally oriented law degree, alongside place­ments at various commer­cial law firms and the Federal Foreign Office, she possesses a thorough under­standing of economic, legis­lative and inter­cultural dynamics. This enables a forward-looking and holistic advisory approach – always with a keen eye for legal and communi­cation pitfalls.

The law graduate specialises in strategic communi­cation in legally sensi­tive and multi-dimen­sionally complex procee­dings with economic and societal relevance. Within the frame­work of inter­disciplinary communi­cation strategies, she develops and manages public narratives that support legal argumen­tation while contri­buting to long-term repu­tational goals. She advises both national and inter­national clients on the targeted positioning, protection and restoration of their corporate and personal reputations – in both civil and criminal procee­dings. Other key areas of focus include ESG communi­cation and socio-political develop­ments with an inter­cultural dimension. Previously, she worked as a jour­nalist for, among others, Süd­deutsche Zeitung, BR and ProSiebenSat.1, and co-led public relations for the state govern­ment of North Rhine-West­phalia during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ahr Valley flood.

Martin Wohlrabe is the founder and managing director of CONSILIUM. He has been advising companies and indivi­duals on strategic communi­cation in excep­tional circum­stances for many years. Wohlrabe previously worked as a journalist for BILD-Zeitung. He also served as a senior adviser to Wolfgang Schäuble in the Bundes­tag. The attorney holds lecture­ships in “Strategic Legal Communi­cation” at Humboldt University Berlin.