Board of Trustees

Gesche Joost is a professor of design research at the Berlin University of the Arts and works at the interfaces between science, politics and digital companies. Her work is about digital transformation in society and business. She heads the Design Research Lab and designs new forms of human-technology interaction at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence. She is a member of the supervisory boards of SAP, ING Deutschland and ottobock and in 2016 co-founded the non-profit startup Calliope gGmbH, which gives children access to digital education. She has been on the presidium of the Goethe-Institut since January 2022 and 1st Vice President since January 2023.

Michael Schwarz studied administrative science in Konstanz and in the USA. He has been working in the foundation sector since 2005, when he joined the Robert Bosch Stiftung after a stint as a consultant at CNC AG, an international strategic communications consultancy. There, he first worked as a project manager in the field of science, then as an assistant to the executive board and most recently as head of communications. In 2014, Michael Schwarz switched to Stiftung Mercator, where he was Managing Director until 2022. Since March 2022, he has been Managing Director of the Baden-Baden Entrepreneurial Talks.

Dr Nicolas Peter Chairman of the BMW Group since 2025 as well as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt of the BMW Group since 2020. He has long been associated with the Goethe-Institut as a member of the Economic Advisory Board. From 2017 to May 2023, he was a member of the Board of Management for Finance at BMW AG. In his CFO role, he has primarily promoted the idea of sustainability in finance and industry, particularly in various honorary roles, including at the Value Balanced Alliance (vba) as well as at the DRSC and the Deutsches Aktieninstitut. Nicolas Peter is also a member of the Economic Advisory Council of the French Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany and holds the honorary title of Conseiller du Commerce Exterieur de la France. He holds a Master's degree in law from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He obtained his doctorate there in 1989 (Dr jur.) and passed his second state examination in law in 1991.

After completing her apprenticeship as a carpenter, she studied industrial design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. She then taught design history there (1994 to 2000). In 2006, she founded Vienna Design Week with Lilli Hollein and Thomas Geisler and was co-director until 2013. From 2001 to 2013, she also worked as a freelance design curator for exhibition projects throughout Europe. From 2014 to 2018, Beyerle was Director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden, Schloss Pillnitz, and also a member of the Management Board of the Dresden State Art Collections, one of Germany's leading museum associations. She has been Director of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg since December 2018

Saba-Nur Cheema is a political scientist and anti-racism trainer. From 2015-2021, she was the educational director of the Anne Frank Educational Centre in Frankfurt. She is currently a researcher on Anti-Semitism in educational contexts at Goethe University. Cheema is a member of the German government's Independent Expert Group on Muslimophobia, which was appointed in 2020. She is co-editor of the book "Frenemies. Antisemitismus, Rassismus und ihre Kritiker*innen" (2022) and designed the new online dossier "Jewish Life in the Past & Present" for the Federal Agency for Civic Education in 2021. In 2024, she published the book ‘Muslimisch-jüdisches Abendbrot
Das Miteinander in Zeiten der Polarisierung’ together with Meron Mendel. She has been a member of the Goethe-Institut since July 2022.

Thomas Oberender is an author, curator and dramaturge. He studied theatre studies and scenic writing in Berlin and wrote his doctorate on Botho Strauß. Oberender was a co-founder of the authors’ theatre association Theater neuen Typs in Berlin. In 1999 he became head dramaturge at the Schauspielhaus Bochum and then co-director at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. He was theatre director of the Salzburg Festival, then artistic director and managing director of the Berlin Festivals. He publishes plays, reviews and essays on contemporary artists and political and aesthetic transformation processes. Since January 2022 he has been on the board of the Goethe-Institut.

Philipp Haußmann completed his second state examination in law before joining what is now the Klett Group as a trainee in 1995. In the years that followed, he held various positions in subsidiaries of the Klett Group - from Editorial Director of PONS GmbH to Managing Director of Ernst Klett Sprachen Verlag. Since 2007, Philipp Haußmann has been Spokesman of the Management Board of Ernst Klett AG and is directly responsible for the holding companies Klett Lernen und Information (KLI) and Klett Kita und Schule (K&S) as well as the corporate communications of the Klett Group. As a family member, Philipp Haußmann today represents the fourth generation of the educational group and is a shareholder of the company.