Dr Maria Furtwängler
Dr Maria Furtwängler lives in Munich and has been President of the Swiss Doctors` Board of Trustees since its foundation. She supports the organisation primarily in its cooperation with business enterprises and the media.
Maria Furtwängler first became involved in the work of Swiss Doctors in Nairobi. Since then, she has travelled to India several times and most recently to the Philippines to monitor the progress of the projects.
Claudia Brück
Claudia Brück is Managing Director for Communications, Policy and Campaigns at Fairtrade Deutschland e.V., the organisation for the promotion of fair trade in the One World.
She was born in Gödenroth/Rheinlandpfalz in 1968 and studied German philology and Regional Science for Latin America in Madrid, Cologne and San Miguel de Tucumán (Argentina).
Claudia Brück has been working for Fairtrade since 1999. As press spokesperson and head of communications and politics, she has repeatedly provided impetus in the sustainability debate.
Claudia Brück has been Deputy Managing Director since 2012. She has been closely involved in the structural changes of the growing organisation. In 2015, she was elected to the Executive Board by the 36 member organisations and confirmed in 2020.
Several years of experience abroad and several visits to partner organisations in Latin America, Africa and Asia put the needs of people in the Global South at the centre of her work.
Claudia Brück lives in Cologne with the private lecturer and coach Paul Wabner.
Prof Dr Peter Eigen
Prof Dr Peter Eigen was born in Augsburg in 1938 and was a member of the Swiss Doctors Executive Committee from 2010 to 2016. He has been a member of our Board of Trustees in a new role since 2016.
After passing his first and second state exams, he obtained his doctorate in law in Frankfurt am Main. From 1967 to 1991, he worked for the World Bank, most recently as Director of the Regional Office for East Africa.
He also founded Transparency International, the Berlin Civil Society Centre and the initiative for transparency in the raw materials industry, EITI, which he chaired until 2011. Peter Eigen taught at the universities of Frankfurt am Main, Georgetown and Harvard and is an honorary professor at the Free University of Berlin.
Peter Eigen has three children with his late wife Dr Jutta Eigen, who worked on many missions with Swiss Doctors. He is a member of Kofi Annan's Africa Progress Panel, Chairman of the Advisory Board of Transparency International and a member of the Advisory Board of the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance, Berlin.
Martin Fuchs
Martin Fuchs advises governments, parliaments, political parties and administrations on digital communication.
He studied media economics in Ilmenau and Stuttgart and now works as lecturer in political communication at various universities. As an election observer in Hamburg, he blogs about digitalisation in politics and is a columnist for the magazine ‘politik & kommunikation’.
He is often quoted in the media as expert on social media and politics (http://bit.ly/MartinFuchsMedien). Among other things, he is an honorary member of the advisory board of Social Media Week Hamburg and a fellow of the Brand New Bundestag and JoinPolitics initiatives.
He is co-author of the recent books ‘Demokratieverstärker’ and ‘Parlamentarische Demokratie heute und morgen’.
Dieter Pool
Dieter Pool works as a freelance consultant in communications and fundraising for several organisations and individuals.
He was born in 1953 in Würselen and studied social work in Cologne. From 1979 to 1985, he managed a counselling centre for young late emigrants in Cologne at the `Internationaler Bund`. From 1985 to 2010, he worked for UNICEF Germany in public relations and fundraising. During this time, the organisation evolved from selling greeting cards on a voluntary basis to becoming an important voice for children's rights and a professional fundraising organisation.
From 2010 to 2019, he was Head of Communications and Fundraising at `Bread for the World` and `Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe`.
After retiring in 2019, he began his consultancy work for former NGO executives who are still working as advisors in retirement and founded the `Senior Expert Circle (SEC) network`.
Wolfram Schaffar
Wolfram Schaffar is a German political scientist, development researcher and scientist for Southeast and East Asia.
Schaffar holds the Chair of Development Politics at the University of Passau since 2021. Previously, he taught as Professor of Political Science and Development Studies at the University of Vienna from 2010 and was a regular guest lecturer at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, Yangon University, Myanmar and the Jigme Shingye Wangchuk School of Law, Bhutan.
His research focuses on digitalisation and platformisation, social politics, and democratisation and de-democratisation processes in the Global South, with regional focus on Southeast Asia. He supports our work with his expertise in development cooperation issues and a special focus on Asia.
Thomas Zeltner
Thomas Zeltner is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in the healthcare sector.
He is the founder and first president of the WHO foundation in Geneva and President of the Board of Trustees of the Swiss Red Cross Blood-Donation AG. He is also the President of the Swiss UNESCO Commission and Vice-President of the Viennese Medical University.
Thomas Zeltner was Director of the Swiss Federal Bureau of Health from 1991 to 2009. During this time, he functioned as a central figure in the Swiss healthcare system.
Thomas Zeltner was born in Bern in 1947, studied medicine and law there, became Professor for the Healthcare System at the Bern University in 1991, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Law by the University of Neuenburg in 2014.