1988 to 1997 - Max-Planck-Gymnasium secondary school in Gelsenkirchen-Buer, university entrance qualification 

Since 1994 - Member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 

1994 - Joined the Young Liberals 

1997 to 1998 - Civilian service at Bruder-Jordan-Haus old people’s home in Gelsenkirchen-Buer 

1998 to 2004 - Studied law at the University of Bonn

2004 - First state examination in law 

2005 to 2007 - Practical legal training at Essen District Court 

2007 - Second state examination in law, admission to practice law 

2007 to 2013 - Lawyer in an international partnership 

2009 to 2013 - Member of the Bundestag, most recently legal policy spokesperson for the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag 

2014 to 2017 - General Secretary of the FDP 

2016 - Obtained a doctorate at the University of Cologne, thesis on “The ECJ and principle of guarantee of ownership. An analysis of the origin and content of EU property law.” 

Since 2017 - Member of the Bundestag 

Since 2017 - Member of the Executive Committee of the FDP 

2017 to 2021 - First Parliamentary Secretary of the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag 

Since December 2021 - Federal Minister of Justice

Photo: BPA/Steffen Kugler

Ralf Wintergerst is president of the German digital association Bitkom. 

Alongside his role at Bitkom, Wintergerst is Chairman of the Management Board of Giesecke+Devrient (G+D). 

Furthermore, he is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of secunet Security Networks AG (Essen, Germany) and President of the Board of Directors of netcetera AG (Zurich, Switzerland). 

Wintergerst studied business administration and holds two master’s degrees – one in management and the other in politics philosophy and economics (PPE). He earned his doctorate at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich with a thesis on corporate governance and management.

Dr Marianne Janik has been CEO of Microsoft Germany since March 2021. She reports to Ralph Haupter, Corporate Vice President Microsoft EMEA. 

Marianne Janik has been responsible for the management of Microsoft Switzerland as Country General Manager since July 2015. Prior to that, she was responsible for the areas of public administration, education and healthcare in the management of Microsoft Germany for around four years. She was able to achieve continuous growth in this central business area for Microsoft and successfully accompany her customers in their innovation and transformation process. 

Born in France and with a doctorate in law, she has many years of sales and management experience in various companies and industries. Marianne Janik started her professional career at Daimler Benz AG in the Public Affairs department. Subsequently, she took over the contract department at an EADS subsidiary and then the sales department for public authorities, the German Armed Forces and industrial customers. 

Marianne Janik is strongly committed to the digital transformation, especially in the areas of innovation, security and education and training. 

Among other things, she is a member of the executive committee of the German digital association Bitkom and a member of the board of directors of AmCham Germany.

Mario Brandenburg was appointed Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Education and Research in June 2022. 

Mario Brandenburg has been a member of the German Bundestag since 2017. During the 19th legislative period (2017 to 2021), he served as spokesperson of the Free Democratic Party for technology policy and represented his party on the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment, on the Committee on the Digital Agenda and on the Study Commission on Artificial Intelligence. In the 20th legislative period (2021 to 2025), Mr Brandenburg was appointed spokesperson of the Free Democratic Party in the German Bundestag for research, technology and innovation and sat on the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment. 

Mario Brandenburg has an M.Sc. in business informatics. In 2009, he was recruited by Europe's largest software company, SAP SE, where he worked until 2017, starting as a working student covering various positions before working as a cloud integration architect and consultant. Mr Brandenburg joined the FDP in 2010 and was elected to the local council and the collective municipality council in Rülzheim, Rhineland-Palatinate in 2014. 

Mario Brandenburg was born on 3 October 1983 in Bad Bergzabern. He lives with his wife and two children in Rülzheim.

Since 27 January 2022 - Commissioner of BMWK for the Digital Economy and Startups 

As of 5 January 2022 - Federal Government Coordinator of German Aerospace Policy 

Since 2017 - Member of the German Bundestag 

2013 -2017 - Head of Office for the Minister and policy officer for fundamental policy issues in science policy at the Ministry for Science, Stuttgart 

2008 – 2013 - Academic working for various women’s networks and mentoring programmes, and at the Centre for Democracy at Zurich University 

2008 - Part of the constituency staff at the office of Theresia Bauer, Member of the State Parliament 

2003 - Member of ALLIANCE 90/THE GREENS 

2002 - 2008 - Student of political sciences, economics and mathematics (Heidelberg) 

2008 - 2013 - Doctoral thesis on ‘The limits of direct democracy’ at Bern University and the University of California

Jonas Andrulis started developing software as a teenager and quickly developed a fascination for mathematics and structures. After studying industrial engineering at the KIT in Karlsruhe and a thesis on Bayesian networks, he worked as a consultant in the field of AI and modeling. active. He successfully founded two AI software companies: The first to plan and optimize of logistics, the second to train and validate human-in-the-loop Deep Learning Algorithms to optimize the interaction between humans and machines. After three years as Engineering Manager for AI research in Apple's Special Projects Group and later Siri, he founded in 2019 again founded Aleph Alpha in Heidelberg, Germany, the third AI startup. Since then, Aleph Alpha has raised a total of 28 mil. Euros raised from some of Europe's top deep tech investors with the goal of establish independent top AI research and run enabling technology for a new kind of AI value creation process.

Julia Sterling works for Commerzbank as Vice President in Business Development / Big Data & Advanced Analytics. Her focus is on cloud and machine learning governance principles. This includes developing and evaluating the strategic direction for the use of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. This also includes issues around AI ethics and legal requirements.

Julia studied in Frankfurt and Loughborough (UK) and holds an interdisciplinary Bachelor in ""Management, Philosophy & Economics"" and Master in ""Finance"" (Capital Markets).

She is a founding member of the "European Cloud User Coalition" (ECUC), member of the IIF Digital Working Group, EBF AI Expert Group and BDB Working Group Open Finance, Data and Artificial Intelligence.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. He is leading the board area SAP Product Engineering with more than 36,000 employees worldwide and has global responsibility for all business software applications at SAP. This includes all functional areas from product strategy and management to product development and innovation, as well as cloud operations and support. He also oversees engineering priorities, such as embedded artificial intelligence. Saueressig joined SAP in 2004 as a student. He was appointed to the Executive Board in 2019. Since 2022 he has been a member of the Board of Directors of Nokia.