Executive Board
Impulse Generator and Promoter for the Next Generation
Members of the Executive Board are top decision-makers from business, consulting and science. They are part of an exclusive forum of Young TLE and with their impulses provide food for thought for a comprehensive exchange of opinions. Answering questions about the future in an interdisciplinary context is inconceivable without practical experience and a scientific foundation. Its members support the Next Generation as impulse givers and promoters.
Dr. Jan Eckert
Group General Counsel at ZF Friedrichshafen AG
Jan Eckert has been General Counsel of the technology group ZF Group since 2012. In this function, he has accompanied all major measures that have led to a doubling of the company’s size in the last ten years with a current turnover of around EUR 45 billion, including the public takeovers of TRW and WABCO. Prior to that, he worked as a lawyer at Hengeler Mueller, was responsible for M&A in the legal department of Bayer AG and was head of the legal department and chief compliance officer at Krauss Maffei AG.
Dr. Alexandra Engel
Head of Legal & Corporate Secretary at Hauck Aufhäuser Lampe Privatbank AG
Alexandra Engel heads the Legal & Corporate Secretary department of Hauck Aufhäuser Lampe Privatbank AG since 2022. She has already been responsible for the legal department, the partner office, the ICS and the product launch process at Bankhaus Lampe KG since 2018. Prior to that, she worked for many years at Deutsche Bank Group in Frankfurt, London and New York, including as Legal Counsel and Executive Assistant to the Chief Risk Officer. Before moving to the financial sector as Legal Counsel at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in 2005, she worked as a consultant for data protection and IT security.
Prof. Dr. Walter Jochmann
Managing Partner of Kienbaum Consultants International GmbH
Walter Jochmann has been with Kienbaum Consultants International GmbH since 1983, initially as an assistant to Jochen Kienbaum, then as a consultant in recruitment and personnel development. He is currently Managing Director/Partner and Head of Serviceline Organization Strategy & HR Transformation. As a consultant, he supports corporations and medium-sized companies in the development of future-oriented organizational models, in the transformation of the HR function, in the strategic realignment of HR departments, in change management, in the development of leadership models and in the assessment of top executives. In 2014 Walter Jochmann also took over as Head of Innovation at the Kienbaum Institute @ISM for Leadership and Transformation in Dortmund, where he is Chairman of the Management Board.
Annette Linau, LL.M.
Global Head of Tax at Evonik Industries AG
Annette Linau, LL.M. Attorney-at-law and in-house lawyer, joined Evonik Industries AG in November 2022 as Global Head of Tax. In this function, she is responsible for tax matters at Evonik Industries throughout the Group and is also a member of the Executive Board of the Evonik Foundation and a member of the Supervisory Board of Evonik Operations GmbH. Before joining Evonik Industries, she worked for more than 15 years in various positions in the tax and finance departments of Innogy SE and the RWE Group.
Thomas Niklas
Head of Tax at ING-DiBa AG
Thomas Niklas is an in-house tax advisor and heads the corporate tax department at ING Germany. He is also Chairman of the Tax Committee of the Association of German Banks (BdB) and a member of the Working Group on Taxation of Investments at the BdB as well as a member of the Fiscal Committee of the European Banking Federation. Before joining ING, he held senior positions in the tax departments of various financial services companies. He started his professional career at one of the Big Four accounting firms.
Bettina Rodenberg
Global Head of Tax & Trade at Henkel AG & Co. KGaA
Bettina Rodenberg, lawyer and tax advisor, heads the Tax and Customs department of Henkel AG & Co. KGaA and has global responsibility for all topics and projects relating to tax and customs. She previously worked for Beiersdorf AG from 2013 to 2020, where she was initially responsible for domestic taxes for the entire group and later for the tax and customs department. Until 2010, she worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers AG, where she focused on group tax law, transformation tax law and transfer pricing. Bettina Rodenberg is a member of the tax committee of the German Chemical Industry Association (VCI).
Kerstin Schulz
Global Head of Tax at Lufthansa Group
Kerstin Schulz has been Global Head of Taxation at the Lufthansa Group since July 2022. In this function, she is responsible for the tax function of the entire Lufthansa Group as well as the customs function of Lufthansa AG. She is a member of the Lufthansa Group’s global lead team and other committees. She is also a member of the supervisory boards of Lufthansa Cargo AG, Lufthansa Technik AG and Eurowings GmbH. Until July 2022, she previously worked for two and a half years as Global Head of Tax and Customs at Beiersdorf AG, where she was in charge of taxes, customs and export control for the Beiersdorf Group. Before that, Kerstin Schulz worked for nine years as Corporate VP of Tax for Fresenius SE & Co KGaA.
Nicole Steuer
General Counsel D/A/CH at Rexel
Nicole Steuer is a lawyer with an international background (including positions in the UK and Canada) and General Counsel at the French Rexel Group, responsible for the Rexel subsidiaries in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Slovenia. In addition to the areas of law and compliance, Nicole Steuer is also responsible for the topic of sustainability/ESG. Furthermore, she has been a member of the Supervisory Board of Rexel Austria since 2017 and a member of the Board of the Federal Association of Electrical Wholesalers (VEG) since 2019.
