Navigating AI: Politics and Society in Germany and the United States

Join the ACG and the Goethe-Institut San Francisco for a discussion with journalists Vladimir Balzer and Simon Book.

The San Francisco Eric M. Warburg Chapter of the American Council on Germany and the Goethe-Institut San Francisco cordially invite you to a discussion and luncheon with Vladimir Balzer, Award Winning Journalist and Moderator, Deutschlandradio, Felix Holtermann, U.S. Bureau Chief, Handelsblatt, Steven E. Sokol, President and CEO, American Council on Germany.

Simon Book was born in 1986. He has worked for DER SPIEGEL since 2020 and has been serving as its business correspondent in the United States since 2023. After studying in Passau and Munich, he trained at the German School of Journalism (Deutsche Journalistenschule). Beginning in 2011, he worked as an editor at the Financial Times Deutschland, and later as a reporter for both Handelsblatt and WirtschaftsWoche. As a Transatlantic Media Fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), he spent several months traveling across the United States in 2013. In 2016, he returned to the U.S. as a Kellen Fellow of the American Council on Germany. He has received numerous awards for his journalism, including the German Journalist Prize (Deutscher Journalistenpreis) and the Heinrich Heine Journalism Prize. He lives with his family in Berkeley, California.

Vladimir Balzer is an award-winning radio journalist and moderator at Deutschlandradio. He grew up in Leipzig and studied in Dublin, Venice, and Leipzig. He began his career as a presenter, reporter, and editor at Deutschlandradio and MDR. Mr. Balzer hosts, among other programs, the daily program “Fazit – Kultur vom Tage” on Deutschlandfunk Kultur. In 2022, he was selected to be a Kellen Fellow by the American Council on Germany. In 2023, he started as a correspondent at Deutschlandradio’s main studio in Berlin. He is known as a commentator for German Television, such as ZDF. He also regularly reports for his broadcaster from the United States.

Dr. Steven E. Sokol (moderator) has been the President and CEO of the American Council on Germany since 2015. Previously, he served as President and CEO of the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh and prior to that he was the Vice President and Director of Programs at the American Council on Germany. Earlier in his career, Dr. Sokol worked at the Aspen Institute Berlin and in the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He holds a Doctorate from Northeastern University as well as an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University’s Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. He has also studied at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg and as a Fulbright Scholar at the Freie Universität in Berlin.