Biographies of the speakers at the Democracy Forum Local Politics 2025
Martina Ansorge
Martina Ansorge has been working for the German Forum for Crime Prevention Foundation since spring 2024, where she is responsible for the conceptual development of the strong centre, network coordination and advising municipal officials and mandate holders. She previously worked as a lawyer specialising in victim protection.
Pia Lucienne Bänecke
Pia Lucienne Bänecke has been a member of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and a city councillor in Buchholz in der Nordheide since 2021. She is particularly committed to feminism and social justice. In addition to her political work, she is active on university committees and is a member of the national Green Youth campaign team and a delegate to the Federal Women’s Council.
Dominik Brasch
Dominik Brasch has been mayor of the Hessian spa town of Bad Soden-Salmünster since 2018. Prior to this, the graduate in public administration spent 13 years as a state civil servant, including ten years as a member of the special police forces. He is an honorary member of the Federal Board of the Young Mayors’ Network, the German Association of Towns and Municipalities and the Hessian Association of Towns and Municipalities and is involved in a wide range of municipal issues, in particular equal living conditions, sustainable urban development and the general strengthening of municipal self-government.
Daphne Büllesbach
Daphne Büllesbach has been Managing Director of the Berlin Governance Platform since February 2020. She previously headed the civil society organisation European Alternatives and curated the Transeuropa Festival. She works at the interface of science, politics and advocacy and is committed to a resilient democracy.
Karamba Diaby
Dr Karamba Diaby, born in 1961 in Marsassoum, Senegal, was elected to the German Bundestag in 2013 as the first black person born in Africa. Professionally, he has been involved in non-profit organisations on education, youth policy, diversity and human rights. He was also a city councillor in Halle an der Saale from 2009 to 2015.
Diaby has served on various committees in the Bundestag since 2013, including those for education, research, human rights and global health. From 2018 to 2021, he was Integration Commissioner for the SPD parliamentary group and a member of the group’s executive committee.
Dörte Dinger
Dr Dörte Dinger, born in 1981 in Bielefeld, has been Head of the Office of the Federal President since March 2022. After studying political science, sociology and history and completing a doctorate, she worked at the Federal Foreign Office and previously headed the Personal Office of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Tara Ella Grimm
Tara Ella Grimm is a project coordinator at the Berlin Governance Platform and is responsible for communications relating to municipal development councils. She previously worked in strategic communications for the Stiftung Bildung and developed freelance communications strategies for civil society organisations.
Sadek Helfen
Sadek Helfen completed his law degree in 2012 and then completed his legal clerkship in the district of the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main. He has been working as a public prosecutor at the Hamburg Public Prosecutor’s Office since February 2015. In the first years of his work, Mr Helfen was responsible for the prosecution of complex property offences. He then worked for more than three years in the administrative and policy department of the head office. Since August 2023, he has been Deputy Head of the Department for State Security Criminal Matters and Other Criminal Matters with a Political Impact and Hate Crime Proceedings. In February 2025, he will take over as Head of the Department for General Criminal Matters.
Peter Kurz
Peter Kurz, born in 1962, was Lord Mayor of Mannheim for 16 years. As President of the Baden-Württemberg Association of Cities and Towns and an internationally active local politician, Kurz has been committed to urban development and strengthening local authorities for many years. Today, he is Chairman of the vhw and the Carlo Schmid Foundation and is an active author (‘Good Politics – What We Need for It’).
Nadine Lindner
Nadine Lindner has been a correspondent in the capital city studio of Deutschlandfunk since 2016, where she specialises in the AfD, among other things. From 2013 to 2015, she was a state correspondent for Deutschlandradio’s programmes in Saxony, where she closely observed the election of the AfD to the first state parliament and the rise of Pegida. She completed her traineeship at Deutschlandradio in Berlin, Cologne and Brussels and previously worked as a journalist at FAZ, mdr and Hitradio RTL Sachsen, among others. Awarded the Federal Press Conference Prize in 2024.
Julia Samtleben
The law graduate became mayor of Stockelsdorf near Lübeck in 2018. The Schleswig-Holstein municipality has 17,000 inhabitants, 13,500 of whom live in the town centre and 3,500 in ten villages.
Since 2021, Samtleben has been the 1st Deputy Federal Chair of the Young Mayors Network. She focuses on municipal finances, school construction and equal living conditions.
Uwe Schneidewind
Uwe Schneidewind has been Lord Mayor of the City of Wuppertal since November 2020. From 2010-2020, he was President and Scientific Director of the Wuppertal Institute and Professor of ‘Innovation Management and Sustainability’ at the Department of Economics at the University of Wuppertal.
Yvette Schöler
In addition to her job and her family with three children, Yvette Schöler has been involved in local politics since 2019, including as a city councillor in the four-gate city of Neubrandenburg. She is also deputy leader of the CDUplus parliamentary group and holds leading positions within the CDU Neubrandenburg and the CDU Mecklenburgische Seenplatte.
Marco Seiffert
Marco Seiffert, born in Berlin in 1971, studied political science and began his journalistic career at rbb, where he worked as a reporter, editor and presenter, including at FRITZ and radioeins. Since 2006, he has presented the morning programme ‘Der Schöne Morgen’ on radioeins and has hosted numerous political talk shows and TV formats such as ‘zibb’ and the ‘Abendshow’. He also regularly presents public events, including the Federal President’s Citizens’ Festival and various political discussions.
Christian Stecker
Christian Stecker has been Professor of the Federal Republic of Germany’s System of Government and Comparison of Political Systems at TU Darmstadt since 2021. His research interests include the design of democracies, party competition, minority governments, electoral behaviour and federalism. Together with VOTO, he regularly organises election assistance for local and mayoral elections.
Julia Tegeler
As Senior Project Manager in the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s ‘Democracy and Cohesion’ programme, Julia Tegeler is currently working on disinformation, media and news formation and the further development of liberal democracy. One focus of her work is the implementation of innovative, impact-oriented model and transfer projects in cooperation with stakeholders from education and civil society.
Sven Tetzlaff
The social and economic historian Sven Tetzlaff heads the Democracy and Cohesion division of the Körber Foundation. He is also Managing Director of the Herbert and Elsbeth Weichmann Foundation.
Kai Unzicker
Dr Kai Unzicker works intensively on the reform and structural development of liberal democracy in the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Democracy and Cohesion programme. Previously, as co-director of ‘Upgrade Democracy’, his focus was on the changes in the democratic public sphere caused by digitalisation and disinformation. As a sought-after expert, he comments on current developments in the media, advises politicians and administrations and provides new insights with empirical studies.
Cécile Weidhofer
Cécile Weidhofer is responsible for the Politics and International Affairs department at EAF Berlin and, as Director, is in particular responsible for projects on the implementation of gender equality in politics and administration. Her focus here is on cross-party work with full-time and voluntary local politicians as well as with local authorities and political parties.
Christine Watty
Christine Watty, journalist, lives in Berlin and works as an editor and presenter at Deutschlandfunk Kultur. She conceives and develops new digital formats for cultural content on linear radio and supervises and presents radio programmes. Her thematic focus is always on culture and politics, as well as the associated social discourses and debates.
Frederike Wistuba
Frederike Wistuba has been working for the German Forum for Crime Prevention Foundation since spring 2024, where she is responsible for the conceptual development of the Strong Unit, network coordination and advising municipal officials and mandate holders. Frederike Wistuba is an extremism researcher and worked in research before joining the Strong Unit.