Julia Jäkel is a manager and publisher with over 25 years of experience in the media and tech industry, and she is currently active as a supervisory board member and advisor across Europe.
She is a member of the supervisory boards of Münchner Rück AG, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, and the European Advisory Board of Google Cloud.
In addition, she is involved at the intersections of business, politics, and society. She serves on the supervisory boards of the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA), University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), and is the deputy chairwoman of the board of trustees of the DFL Foundation. Since March 2023, she has chaired the "Council for the Future Development of Public Broadcasting" (Zukunftsrat) on behalf of the federal states, which presented its report with fundamental reform proposals in January 2024.
After studying history, political science, and economics (VWL) in Heidelberg, Harvard, and Cambridge (MPhil), she began her career in 1997 with the Bertelsmann Entrepreneurs Program, which led her to Gruner+Jahr a year later. In 2012, Jäkel was appointed to the board of the publishing house Gruner+Jahr, and in 2013 she became its CEO. Under her leadership, Gruner+Jahr underwent significant transformation, particularly through the development of digital offerings, which accounted for over 50% of revenue by 2021. Jäkel was also a member of Bertelsmann's Group Management Committee since 2013 and chaired the Bertelsmann Content Alliance, coordinating the group's content businesses in Germany.
She left Gruner+Jahr and Bertelsmann in 2021.
Julia Jäkel is married and the mother of twins.
