Growing up in Hamburg and on the East Coast of the USA, Andreas Schneider started his business career at Otto Group with stops in Hamburg, Milan / Biella and Munich.

Dieter Schwarz, founder of DS Produkte, brought Andreas Schneider back to Hamburg at the end of 1999. Here, Andreas Schneider has been Managing Director of DS Group for over 20 years and has since been responsible for the areas of finance, controlling, logis- tics and IT. During this time, DS Group has increased its turnover tenfold. In this dynamic environment, Andreas Schneider built his areas of responsibility into important pillars of the company‘s so- lid growth. Andreas Schneider has been Social Chain AG’s Chief Financial Officer since spring 2022. Andreas Schneider is married and has two grown-up sons.

Dr. Thorsten Bieg studied law at the Universities of Bayreuth and Aberdeen and is a lawyer and tax consultant. Prior to this, Dr. Thorsten Bieg completed a dual training/studies in business administration (BA) at the Berufsakademie in Flensburg and at Eon Hanse AG. Dr. Thorsten Bieg has more than 25 years of professional experience and has been a partner since 2000.
Dr. Thorsten Bieg is a restructuring expert, trustee, self-administrator and liquidator. His specialities: legal advice on restructuring, certain management & board functions in case of crisis, trusteeships and true sale investor roles, legal Support for distressed transactions of all kind. Additional functions: moderator, observer, security trustee, liquidator; self administration.

Prof. Dr. Gerrit Hölzle graduated from the Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg top of his class in law. He has been a specialist lawyer for tax and bankruptcy law since 2002 and has since been appointed to hundreds of corporate insolvency proceedings. He also regularly acts as managing director in self-administered insolvency proceedings.

In addition, he advises companies in crisis situations; his focus is on restructuring and advising in crises, as well as on insolvency administration. Prof. Dr. Gerrit Hölzle has over 20 years of professional experience and is a partner at the nationwide law firm GÖRG.

Stephan Brunke, Chartered Accountant and Tax Advisor, has over 20 years of professional experience in the areas of auditing, corporate transactions/corporate finance and corporate consultancy.
During this time, he was, amongst others, a partner of a Big4 company (auditing firm) for many years. Since 2017, he has been working for his own law firm.

Henrike Luszick is founder & CEO of the leading independent venture builder Bridgemaker. With Bridgemaker she has been bringing courage, innovation and entrepreneurship back to the economy since 2016 while partnering with corporations, hidden champions and family businesses.

Luszick is experienced in business model innovation, digitalisation as well as new leadership. She spent several months abroad, i.e. China, England and Norway, which further deepened her international knowledge.

Before initiating Bridgemaker, Luszick founded her first start-up immediately after finishing university, worked as a management consultant for several years and invested in different start-ups and businesses for a lot of different institutions and family businesses.

The Berlin entrepreneur Sebastian Stietzel has already founded and managed several companies. His strengths are strategic and operational business development. In recent years, he has specialised in the areas of capital market fitness, post-merger integration and reorganisation. Sebastian Stietzel is voluntarily involved in SME policy in various functions and has been President of the Berlin CCI since 2022.