Strategic Minds Company

Martin Wiesmann is Managing Partner at Berlin Global Advisors. He has 30 years of experience in the financial industry, having managed more than 100 M&A, equity and debt financing transactions. After 12 years in Deutsche Banks’ Investment Banking Division, in 2007 he joined J.P. Morgan as a Managing Director of its German Banking business. Martin was appointed Senior Country Officer for J.P. Morgan in Germany in 2014 and Vice Chairman Investment Banking Europe, Middle East and Africa in 2016, serving predominantly industrial clients, financial institutions and public sector clients in Germany and the European Union.
In 2020, Martin joined the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin as Senior Associate Fellow with a particular emphasis on Geo-economics and the European Monetary Union. In 2021 he co-founded the liberal Think Tank Denkfabrik R21, assuming roles as Program Director and Chairman of the advisory board. Martin is a member of the Supervisory Board of LEG Immobilien SE, Düsseldorf, and member of Atlantik-Brücke e.V. as well as the Baden-Badener Unternehmer Gespräche e.V.. Martin pursues his cultural interests as member of the Boards of Trustees of Literaturhaus Frankfurt, Städel Museum and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, and the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung in Darmstadt.

Martin Wiesmann holds a Certificate of Political Studies, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris („Sciences Po“), a Master of Arts in Political Science, Contemporary History and Constitutional Law of Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, and a Master of Business Administration of Joseph Katz School of Business, University of Pittsburgh.

Ralf Welt is a Managing Partner at BGA and the Founder of BGA’s government affairs partner firm Dicomm Advisors, a political consultancy. Ralf looks back at more than 25 years of experience in advising listed companies as well as political institutions, government bodies and a number of ministers on European, federal and state level. Before creating his own firm, he was Director of External Relations and member of the management committee of the Procter & Gamble Group in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Ralf has extensive expertise in public diplomacy, corporate lobbying, and crisis communication. He worked as a political advisor in the German Chancellery and Bundestag from 1987 to 1989, and served as personal aide to the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Dr. Otto Count Lambsdorff during the German reunification. He also served as Chairman of the Government Relations Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany e.V. (Amcham) for nearly 10 years.

Ralf Welt holds a Masters degree in Political Science, Constitutional and International Law and Economic and Social History from the Universities Mainz and Bonn and is a member of the German Association of Political Consultants (de’ge’pol), the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), and the Society of Friends of DIW Berlin, one of the leading economic research institutes in Germany.

Sibylle Pflüger joined Strategic Minds Company in 2011. After studying in Dresden and Hanover, she obtained a Master of Communication and Advertising in Magdeburg. Afterwards, she first worked as an advisor and office manager in the German Bundestag from 2000 to 2003, then as an advisor to the management of the German Foundation for World Population (DSW).

From 2005 to 2011, Sibylle Pflüger was an officer at EnBW AG, first in the area of protocol and board events, then for CSR, sustainability and corporate positioning.

Sibylle Pflüger was born in Hanover in 1977 and now lives in Berlin with her husband Friedbert and their two children.

Dr Friedbert Pflüger, former Deputy Minister (State Secretary) in the Ministry of Defence, was born in Hanover on March 6, 1955. For over two decades, he has held leadership positions in politics, administration, business and academia.

Friedbert Pflüger is founder of Strategic Minds Company in Berlin and Chairman of the Internet Economy Foundation (IE.F). He is also co-partner of other firms such as Kurdish German European Business Alliances (KGE) based in Erbil (North Iraq); Kimya LLC based in Tehran, Isfahan and Kish Islands; GLB German Latin Business GmbH, based in Berlin and Santa Cruz, Bolivia; and iconomy GmbH, based in Berlin. Additionally, Friedbert Pflüger is senior advisor to Roland Berger.

From 2009 to 2020, Friedbert Pflüger served as Visiting Professor for international relations at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, where he directed the renowned European Cluster for Climate, Energy and Resource Security (EUCERS), which was transferred to the University of Bonn in 2020, where Pflüger teaches since then. He is also senior fellow of the Atlantic Council of the U.S., senior advisor to the World Energy Council’s Global Gas Centre, head of the Commodities Workgroup of Atlantikbrücke, member of the Steering Committee of the Arab-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Ghorfa) and member of the advisory board of the Institute of Energy Economics (EWI) at the University of Cologne. Friedbert Pflüger is author and editor of numerous books and publishes on topics of energy and digital policy, among others in Handelsblatt, die ZEIT, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Internationale Politik, Energy Post.

Together with Ambassador (ret.) Janusz Reiter he chairs the monthly Energy Dialogues at the Reichstag since 2009, hosting leading figures from politics and the energy sector.

Friedbert Pflüger studied Political Science, Economics and Constitutional Law in Göttingen, Bonn and Harvard, where he also taught at the Center for International Affairs under the supervision of Samuel Huntington. In 1982, he received his PhD under the supervision of Karl Dietrich Bracher in Bonn with a thesis on American foreign policy (summa cum laude). In 1989, for three months he was visiting fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University. In addition to his studies, he was National Chairman of CDU and CSU‘s student organization and member of the board of the Junge Union, the youth organization of the Christian Democratic Party.

After his studies, between 1981 and 1989, Friedbert Pflüger worked for the Governing Mayor of Berlin and later the German President, Richard von Weizsäcker. Here, he became one of the closest confidants of the President: first as speechwriter, later as chief of staff and press secretary. In 1990, Friedbert Pflüger was elected to the first unified German Parliament, where he served until 2006, among others, as chair of the Committee for EU Affairs, Foreign Policy Spokesperson of the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group and Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Defence during the first Merkel Government. For ten years each, he was deputy chair of the CDU of Lower Saxony and Member of the Federal Board and the Executive Committee of the CDU respectively.

Friedbert Pflüger is Chairman of the Board of Zukunft Gas („Future Gas“), an association of 140 companies dealing with gas and hydrogen along the value chain. He holds various awards and decorations, e.g. for his contribution to the Eastern enlargement of the EU and NATO with the Polish, Bulgarian and Lithuanian Orders of Merit. Pflüger is also Commander of the Legion of Honour of the French Republic as well as of the Royal Victorian Order of the United Kingdom.

Friedbert Pflüger lives in Berlin together with his wife, Sibylle Pflüger, and his two children.

Gerhard Hinterhäuser is Senior Advisor at Strategic Minds Company, covering Asia and the financial markets. Prior to joining, he was CEO of Meag Hong Kong, the asset management company of the Munich Re Group in Asia Pacific, from 2006 to 2018.

Simultaneously he was Vice President of PICC Asset Management, a large Chinese state-owned company in Shanghai. Gerhard has spent most of his career in Asia, working out of Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

He holds a PhD in business from the Cologne University in Germany.

He studied in China from 1976 to 1977 and did postgraduate research at the Tokyo University with a scholarship of the Japan Foundation from 1983 to 1984.

He is a German national fluent in French, English, Italian, Japanese and Mandarin. 

Aliya Mussina joined Strategic Minds Company in 2022. 

Mussina has been a partner and CEO of the Center for Economic, Social and Legal Initiatives AQ-i since July 2021.

Between 2007 to June 2021, Mussina worked for the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Kazakhstan. Initially she was working as a Head of Representative, where she was instrumental on opening and establishing the Foundation’s representation in Kazakhstan, and then as a research associate. In the last 5 years she was responsible specifically for projects with focus on transformation of the economy, climate and energy. 

From 2010 to 2012, Aliya Mussina was also appointed as a board member of the Soros Foundation Kazakhstan. 

Prior to that, Mussina was Head of Department „International projects“ and lecturer at the German-Kazakh University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She was also a lecturer at the Advanced Training Academy of the Economy in Saalfeld, Germany at the University of Pavlodar, worked at the Chamber of Commerce and at the Ministry of Youth in Kazakhstan. 

In 2005 she obtained a Master of Arts degree from Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. Before that in 1998, she graduated from the Torajgyrov University in Pavlodar, Kazakhstan in the field of German language and literature. 

Between 2001-2003, Mussina participated in a postgraduate program at the Faculty of Economics of the German-Kazakh University in Almaty, Kazakhstan. 

In 2018, she spent a semester at the Hochschule für nachhaltige Entwicklung Eberswalde for further education and research. 

Mussina is an alumna of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the DAAD and the Goethe Institute. 

Aliya Mussina was born in Kazakhstan on August 16, 1975. She speaks Kazakh, German, Russian and English.

was born on August 30, 1949 in Schneverdingen (Lower Saxony). After studying geography and history at the University of Cologne, he entered the teaching profession in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, most recently as headmaster of a grammar school in Cologne for 21 years. 

Möring was a member of the Cologne City Council from 1999 to 2013 (Transport Committee, Finance Committee) and a member and spokesperson on transport policy in the Regional Council of the Cologne administrative district from 2001 to 2013. From 2004 to 2013, he was Chairman of the Association Assembly of the Rhine-Sieg Transport Association and Chairman of the CDU parliamentary group. He also held these functions in the newly founded Verkehrsverbund Nahverkehr Rheinland from 2008 to 2013.

From 2013 to 2021, Karsten Möring was a member of the German Bundestag for the federal constituency 93 Cologne I. As a member of the Bundestag, he was a full member of the Committee for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and Committee for Construction, Housing, Urban Development and Municipalities. He was a deputy member of the committees on economics and energy and on transport and digital infrastructure.  

Karsten Möring is married and lives with his wife in Cologne.

As Principal, Arash Duero is in charge of energy and commodities as well as for some regions of the Middle East. He joined Strategic Minds Company in 2011.

Arash Duero is an Advisor to the Global Gas Centre, a member of the German Economic Council, and a Senior Fellow and Head of Strategic Programs at the European Cluster for Climate, Energy and Resource Security (EUCERS), University of Bonn. Formerly, he was a policy officer at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in the Netherlands, as well as a research fellow at the Berlin Centre for Caspian Region Studies at the Free University of Berlin. 

A native of Savannah, Georgia, USA, Arash Duero studied economics at Georgia Southern University and holds an advanced degree in Political Science with a focus on Macroeconomics and International Energy Policy from the Free University in Berlin, Germany. In addition to his native tongue of English, he speaks German fluently and can converse in Farsi and Armenian. He is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Sebastian Kiefer joined the Strategic Minds Company team in 2019. He is responsible for the Central Asian region, as well as Central and Eastern Europe.

Previously, he worked for the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce (AHK), where he was responsible for economics and energy and headed the government relations department. 

During his studies of political science, public law and history at the University of Regensburg, he specialized on transformation processes of post-Soviet societies and on International Relations.

Sebastian Kiefer speaks German, English and Russian.

Hauke Hansen has been working for Strategic Minds since 2022 and focuses on energy, climate and raw material issues.  

Prior to this he worked for a tax advisory company, and as an advisor for budget policy issues for an association in Berlin.

Hauke Hansen received his Bachelor of Science in Economics at the University of Hamburg, and his Master of Arts in General Management at the IUBH Bad Honnef.

He speaks German, English and French.

Since 2010, Irmgard Braun is in charge of the company’s finances and controlling.

She has completed a professional training as an office administrator and has worked for Computer Manufaktur GmbH (Berlin) and Hayde AG (Bonn). Her areas of responsibility were bookkeeping, human resources, trainings, management events and internal communication.

Irmgard Braun was born in Tirol. She speaks German and English.