Dr. Georg Thiel was appointed President of the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) and Federal Returning Officer on 16 October 2017. After completing his legal studies and obtaining his doctor’s degree in Cologne, he joined the Federal Civil Defence Agency in 1988 where he was promoted to Head of Section. From 1997 to 2002 he headed the Division “Organization and Information Technology” and various project groups at the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Then he was President of the Federal Agency for Technical Relief. In 2006, Dr. Thiel returned to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, where he was Deputy Head of the Directorate-General “Administrative Modernization; Administrative Organization”. There he was responsible, among other things, for geoinformation, statistics, procurement and the single government service telephone number. From October 2015 to October 2016, Dr. Thiel was deputy head of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. In October 2015, he was appointed Vice-President of the Federal Statistical Office and Deputy Federal Returning Officer. Since January 2017, he has also been deputy of the Commissioner for Refugee Management.

Dr. Markus Richter was born in Münster, Westphalia in 1976. He has two children. After graduating from law studies at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster, he earned a doctorate in law and completed his practical legal training at the Regional Court in Hamm, followed by the second state examination in law one year later.
Starting in 2005, Dr. Markus Richter held several positions at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, with assignments in human resources, organisation, the office of the President and areas including integration and migration policy issues. In 2014 he became head of IT units at the Federal Office of Administration. He returned to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees as head of the Infrastructure and IT Directorate in 2015 and became Vice-President of the agency in 2018. On 1 May 2020 Dr. Markus Richter was appointed State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community and Federal Government Commissioner for Information Technology.

Dr. Mariana Kotzeva was appointed by the European Commission on 1 March 2018. She is not only the first Bulgarian Director-General in the European Commission but also the first woman at the helm of Eurostat. Ms Kotzeva held the post of Acting Director-General of Eurostat from 1 January 2017. She joined Eurostat as a special adviser in 2012, becoming its Deputy Director-General in 2014. Prior to joining the European Commission, Ms Kotzeva was the Head of Bulgaria’s National Statistical Institute. She also held a number of high-level consulting posts in the Bulgarian and foreign administrations, and led international projects for the United Nations and the World Bank. Ms Kotzeva has a Master’s degree in economics and a PhD in statistics and econometrics. She is an Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia.

Stefan Schweinfest was appointed Director of the Statistics Division (UNSD/DESA) in July 2014. Under his leadership, the Division compiles and disseminates global statistical information, develops standards and norms for statistical activities including the integration of geospatial, statistical and other information, and supports countries’ efforts to strengthen their national statistical and geospatial systems.

Stefan Schweinfest started his career joining the Statistics Division in 1989 in the area of national accounting. He subsequently worked in various other areas, such as statistical capacity building programmes, and indicator frameworks. For many years, he was also responsible for external relationships of the Division, both with member countries as well as with international partner organizations. He has been the substantive secretary of two intergovernmental bodies, the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) since 2002, and the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UNGGIM) since 2011.
As the Director of the Statistics Division, Stefan Schweinfest supported the work of Statistical Commission and its Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) to develop the global indicator framework to monitor progress towards the SDGs, which was adopted by UNSC at its 48th session in March 2017 and subsequently by ECOSOC and the General Assembly. Under his leadership, the Division works on implementing this framework and ensuring countries receive capacity building support to monitor progress towards the SDGs.

He played a key role in the negotiations leading to the 2011 ECOSOC resolution to establish UN-GGIM and has actively involved himself with global geospatial information management since, including the negotiations leading to a second ECOSOC resolution in 2016 that strengthens and broadens the mandate of this Committee of Experts.
He was the Officer-in-Charge of DESA’s Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government (DPIDG) from 1 March 2018 until 28 February 2019.

Stefan Schweinfest studied Mathematical Economics at the Universities of Wuerzburg and Bonn in Germany. He holds a Diplome D’Etudes Approfondies (Masters equivalent) from the University of Paris in these fields. He also conducted postgraduate research at the London School of Economics (LSE).
In his private time, he likes to sing and has performed numerous concerts with his chorus in Carnegie Hall. He is also a passionate marathon runner and loves to hit the road all over the world.

Prof. Dr. Isabel Schnabel is Professor of Financial Economics at the University of Bonn (on leave) and a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB) where she is responsible for Market Operations, Research and Statistics. Before joining the ECB, she was spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence “ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy”. From 2014 to 2019 she served as a member of the German Council of Economic Experts (“Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung”), and in 2019 she was Co-Chair of the Franco-German Council of Economic Experts. In 2018 she was awarded the Gustav Stolper Prize of the Verein for Socialpolitik. She is currently a Council Member of the European Economic Association. Isabel Schnabel studied Economics in Paris I, Berkeley and Mannheim, where she also received her PhD in 2003.

Lars P. Feld (54) is Professor of Economic Policy and Regulatory Economics at the University of Freiburg and Director of the Walter Eucken Institute. Since March 2020 he has been chairman of the German Council of Economic Experts, of which he has been a member since March 2011. His research focuses on economic policy, finance, new political economy and economic analysis of law. After studying in Saarbrücken, Feld was a research assistant at the University of St. Gallen, where he received his doctorate in 1999 and his habilitation in 2002. Lars P. Feld took up his first full professorship in Marburg in 2002 at the age of 35.

Dominik Rozkrut is the President of Statistics Poland since 2016. Dr. Rozkrut is a member of the European Statistical System Committee. He has been nominated to be the Chair of the ESS Partnership Group for 2020-2021. He is a member of the OECD’s Committee on Statistics and Statistics Policy and serves
as a bureau member of the UNECE Conference of European Statisticians. He represents Poland on the UN Statistical Commission. Dominik Rozkrut has also been involved in the ESS Vision Implementation Group, the UN Friends of the Chair Group on the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, the UN Global Working Group on Big Data for Official Statistics, UNECE High-Level Group on Modernisation of Official Statistics. He also has served as a member of the EU Business-to-Government (B2G) Data Sharing expert group until 2019. Dr. Rozkrut’s career began at the Department of Statistics and Econometrics at the University of Szczecin. At the same time, he also worked as a member of a market risk management team at the commercial bank. He joined official statistics in 2007 and served as Director of the office’s regional branch, being a project manager for numerous research and development projects. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Szczecin, where he received his Ph.D. in statistics and econometrics.
He completed an internship at the University of Massachusetts, Lappeenranta University of Technology, and UNU-MERIT. Dr. Rozkrut is a member of the Main Council of the Polish Statistical Association.

Prof. Dr. Agnès Bénassy-Quéré is Chief Economist at the French Treasury, on leave from University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Paris School of Economics where she is a Professor of economics. Prior to moving to the Treasury, she was a Member of the French macro-prudential authority, the tax advisory council, the productivity council, the Franco-German council of economic experts, and the Banque of France general board. She was also in charge of the CEPR European Economic Architecture Research and Policy Network. She was a non-resident fellow at Bruegel and a member of the CESIfo network. From 2012 until 2017, she chaired the French Council of Economic Advisors. Prior positions include Director of CEPII, the French research institute in international economics (2006-2012), and academic positions at École Polytechnique, the University of Paris-Ouest and the University of Lille 2. Her research interests focus on the international monetary system and European macroeconomic policy.

Stefano Palmieri, is a member of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), since 2009, and is currently President of its Section for Economic and Monetary Union and Economic and Social Cohesion. He also served as President of the EESC’s Europe 2020 Steering Committee.
He is member of the International and European Department at the Italian trade union Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL). He served as head of the CGIL’s Europe office in Brussels (2009-2010). Previously he held several positions including: Coordinator of research in “Local development and industrial policy” at Istituto di Ricerche Economiche e Sociali (IRES); member of the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the OECD, of the Steering Committee of the Institute de la Protection Sociale Europeenne (IPSE), of the ICFTU/ITS/TUAC Committee for International Co-operation on Workers Capital, of the Macroeconomic Group of the Social Dialogue Committee of the European Trade Union Confederation at the European Commission; researcher at the Italian National Council for Economy and Labor (CNEL) and expert on the Science of Finance and Financial Law at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”.