Foreign Correspondent Unplugged: Democracy under Pressure

Dr. Melanie Amann studied Law in Trier, Aix-en-Provence and Berlin and received her doctorate from the LMU Munich. From 2003 to 2004, she spent a year at the German School of Journalism in Munich. After working as an editor at the Financial Times Deutschland, the F.A.Z. and the F.A.S., she moved to SPIEGEL in Berlin in 2013. Since February 2019, she has headed SPIEGEL's capital city bureau, together with Sebastian Fischer, Christoph Hickmann and Martin Knobbe. She has been a member of the editorial board since May 2021.

Vladimir Balzer is an award-winning radio journalist and moderator at Deutschlandfunk. 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 the Capital Studios of Deutschlandfunk 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. 

Steven E. Sokol 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. Prior to this, Dr. Sokol served as the Deputy Director of the Aspen Institute Berlin, was the Head of the Project Management Department at the Bonn International Center for Conversion GmbH (BICC), and a Program Officer in the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Earlier in his career, he also was a Program Manager at the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) and was a paralegal at Fulbright & Jaworski.
 
He holds a Doctorate in Law and Policy from Northeastern University as well as an M.A. in International Relations and International Economics 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. Dr. Sokol serves on several non-profit boards and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was awarded a Bundesverdienstkreuz (Order of Merit) for his work to strengthen German-American relations.