Daniela Schwarzer

Prof. Dr. Daniela Schwarzer joined the Executive Board of the Bertelsmann Stiftung in 2023. She is a leading expert on European and international affairs and has had a 20-year career at renowned think tanks, foundations and universities.
From 2021 to 2023 she served as Executive Director for Europe and Central Asia at the Open Society Foundations, the world’s largest foundation working to strengthen the rule of law, democracy and open societies. In 2021, she was appointed honorary professor of political science at Freie Universität Berlin. In autumn 2022, she was a visiting professor at Harvard University, with which she has also been affiliated as a senior fellow.
From 2016 to 2021, she was director and CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations. (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik, DGAP). Prior to that, she served as research director on the executive team of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and lead its Berlin office and Europe program. From 2004 to 2013, she worked for the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, where she headed the Europe research group beginning in 2008. From 1999 to 2004, she was an opinion page editor and France correspondent for the Financial Times Deutschland.
Daniela Schwarzer is regularly consulted as an expert and policy advisor. In 2023, she was co-rapporteur of the working group on EU reform and enlargement, convened by the French and German governments. From 2020 to 2022 she served as special advisor to the High Representative and Vice-President of the European Commission Josep Borrell. She also advised France and Poland during their respective EU presidencies and was a consultant to the French prime minister’s Centre dʼAnalyse Stratégique.
Since 2025, Daniela Schwarzer has been serving as the honorary president of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations and as co-chair of the German-Japanese Forum. She is a member of the supervisory boards of BNP Paribas and Covivio, an honorary board member of DGAP and a non-executive board member of the Jacques Delors Institute/Centre (Paris, Berlin) and a Council member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). In 2017, she was inducted into the French Legion of Honour.