Speakers at the Rechts­kommuni­ka­tions­gipfel 2024

Marco Buschmann was born on August 1, 1977 in Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr area. After graduating from high school, he completed his civilian service in a nursing home for the elderly in Gelsenkirchen-Buer and then studied law at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn, where he passed his first state law exam in 2004. After his second state examination in law in 2007 in Hamm, Minister Buschmann worked as a lawyer in an international law firm until 2013. He has been active in politics as a member of the FDP since 1994. From 2009 to 2013, he was a member of the Bundestag, responsible for legal policy. From 2014 to 2017, he served as Federal Chairman of the FDP. After being re-elected to the German Bundestag in 2017, he served as the First Parliamentary Secretary of the FDP parliamentary group until 2021. From December 2021 to November 2024, he headed the Federal Ministry of Justice.

Dr. Wolf Bussian is a managing partner of A&O Shearman's German office. Admitted since 2005, he focuses on litigation and investigations in the financial sector and regularly deals with disputes involving complex financial products and tax-motivated transactions. He also regularly publishes in legal journals and the daily press on procedural, capital market and banking law topics. Legal 500 Deutschland 2019 praises his finance litigation practice as market-leading. Chambers Global has recognized him as a leading expert in finance litigation since 2015, and JUVE 2017/2018 lists him as a “leading expert in investigations and disputes related to tax transactions such as cum/ex and cum/cum deals”. The Financial Times praised the law firm as “outstanding” for a case it led in the category “Innovation in Dispute Resolution” at the FT Innovative Lawyers Awards 2015.

Ulrike Demmer, director of Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb), was born in 1973 in Solingen. She studied law in Bonn and Berlin. After attending the Berlin School of Journalism, she did an internship at ZDF. She has worked for radioeins from rbb, NDR (Extra 3) and for the ZDF morning show, among others. During her time at Spiegel, where she served as a correspondent for defense and security policy, she received the German Reporter Award and the Henri Nannen Award. She then moved to the Berlin office of Focus magazine, and subsequently became head of the capital city office of RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND). From 2016 to 2021, Ulrike Demmer was deputy spokeswoman for the German government. The rbb broadcasting council elected Demmer as director of rbb in June 2023.

Philipp Encz studied European Business Administration at ESB Reutlingen and in London after completing a banking apprenticeship. He began his career as a business journalist at Bloomberg in New York in 2000, with further stations in Munich, London and Frankfurt. In 2011, he joined SIEMENS, where he most recently headed global financial and business communications. Before taking over communications for Europe and Germany at Citigroup in Frankfurt in March 2022, he spent almost three years with his family in Toulouse, where he held global communications responsibilities at Airbus. Since June 2024, he has been in the role of Head of Communications at Commerzbank.

Daria Gladkov specializes in strategic communication in insolvency law and economic proceedings in civil and criminal contexts. Her clients include both domestic and foreign companies, which she supports in the individual establishment, defense or rebuilding of their reputation. Before joining CONSILIUM, the lawyer (LMU Munich) worked as an author for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Bayerischer Rundfunk and the ProSiebenSat.1 media group in the fields of print, online, radio and TV. Most recently, Daria Gladkov was responsible for the cross-media and public relations work of the state government and the prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Anne Meier-Göring is a judge in Hamburg. She completed her law studies in Hamburg and Geneva, followed by a legal clerkship in Hamburg and London. After graduating, she initially worked as a lawyer in the field of commercial and corporate law in a commercial law firm. She has devoted herself to the office of judge since 1999 and has since worked as a judge in the civil chamber as well as in the large and small criminal chamber. Since 2014, Anne Meier-Göring has been the presiding judge of a juvenile court at the Hamburg District Court. In addition, she worked as a consultant at the Federal Ministry of Justice between 2000 and 2002, where she was responsible for the German Act to Modernize the Law of Obligations. Anne Meier-Göring has given numerous lectures and seminars on this topic throughout Germany.

Simone Kämpfer is a lawyer and partner at the major international law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. She heads the white-collar crime practice for the Central Europe region. Before becoming a lawyer, she worked as a public prosecutor for nine years. Kämpfer defends and advises in the field of white-collar crime and conducts internal investigations for companies. She also has expertise in advising companies on compliance, ESG, ethics and sustainable leadership. She is a member of the supervisory board of Droege Group AG and a member of the board of trustees of Bucerius Law School and the firm's ethics committee.

Melanie Riley has over 30 years of public relations experience in legal and corporate communications, public affairs and litigation PR. She started her career at an international investment bank, where she was responsible for contact with print and broadcast media across Europe. In 2002, Melanie Riley founded Bell Yard Communications, where she advises her clients on a wide range of sensitive issues. Bell Yard has been ranked as a leading litigation PR agency in every edition of Chambers and Partners' Litigation Support Guide since its launch in 2018. Melanie also leads a UK-based program to expose the inequality in the UK-US extradition regime and assists victims of unjustified US extradition requests.

Maximilian Schwärecke is an attorney and works as a consultant at CONSILIUM Rechtskommunikation. He advises primarily on strategic communication in (out-of-court) disputes and cross-border proceedings at CONSILIUM Rechtskommunikation. Before joining CONSILIUM as a consultant, he worked as a lawyer in a leading international law firm in public commercial law. He completed his legal training at the Berlin Court of Appeal, Humboldt University Berlin and Tongji University in Shanghai.

Ministerialdirektor a. D. Michael Sell (RA, StB, Historiker) stammt aus dem Ruhrgebiet und studierte Rechts- und Finanzwissenschaft an der Ruhr-Universität Bochum; später Zeitgeschichte in Berlin. After starting his career at a large tax consultancy, he joined the Federal Ministry of Finance in 1993 and then worked at the Federal Chancellery for 12 years from 1996, where he most recently headed the “Fiscal Policy (Taxes - Budget - Financial Market)” group. From 2008 to 2012, he was Executive Director for Cross-Sectional Tasks/Internal Administration at the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority. From 2012 to 2018, he headed the Tax Department at the Federal Ministry of Finance. After being placed on temporary leave as a result of the change of government, he worked as a lawyer and tax advisor. He has been head of the Auditor Oversight since September 2021 and will retire at the end of 2024 upon reaching the age limit.

Volker Troche is the spokesperson for the board of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation. He has been a member of the board and legal advisor to the foundation since 2011. Volker Troche studied law and European legal practice.

Christian Wagner studied law at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, where he later also completed his doctorate. After his legal clerkship, he started his career in a major international law firm in Frankfurt and London. He has been with Commerzbank since November 2006 and has held various functions within the group. He was appointed to the Divisional Board for Legal Affairs in March 2021.

Claus Weselsky (65) grew up in the former GDR. He is a trained diesel engine fitter and train driver and was the chairman of the German Train Drivers' Union (GDL), which has over 40,000 members, from 2008 until September 2024. Weselsky is a member of the CDU, but has no intention of entering politics as the former head of the GDL. He lives near Dresden, is married for the second time and is the father of an adult son.

Martin Wohlrabe is the founder and managing director of CONSILIUM Rechtskommunikation. For many years, he has advised companies and individuals on the strategic communication of special situations. Wohlrabe previously worked as a journalist for the BILD newspaper. He also worked as a consultant to Wolfgang Schäuble in the Bundestag. The lawyer holds teaching positions for “Strategic Legal Communication” at the University of Freiburg and, starting in 2023, also at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Barbara Wolf has been Head of Communications at the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation since 2019 and has also been responsible for the areas of transformation and strategic development since 2023. She studied English, social policy and economics and completed a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a focus on “Digital Business Leadership and Transformation”.

Dr. Felix W. Zimmermann is the editor-in-chief of Legal Tribune Online (LTO) and an attorney. He also teaches press law at the Henri Nannen School of Journalism in Hamburg. Before joining LTO, he worked as a journalist at the German television channel ZDF (including Frontal21) and appeared as a ZDF legal expert in all of the channel's news programs. Zimmermann is familiar with both sides of the press law coin. Before becoming a journalist, he worked for three years as a lawyer at the law firm Schertz Bergmann Rechtsanwälte, where he primarily represented those affected by media coverage.