Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven is GIZ’s new managing director

At its meeting on 30 June, the Supervisory Board of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH appointed a new managing director: Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven. GIZ’s Management Board is now complete again, with the development expert joining Chair of the Management Board Tanja Gönner and Labour Relations Director Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel at the head of the federal enterprise. Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven will start work on 1 October 2020. 

Martin Jäger, Chair of the GIZ Supervisory Board and State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), welcomed the decision: ‘With Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven we are adding a renowned development and sustainability expert, on both the national and international stage, to GIZ’s Management Board. She has a wealth of political and operational experience in international cooperation and has successfully driven forward a number of key initiatives in the areas of displacement and migration, climate change, health and global transformation in recent years.’ 

Tanja Gönner, Chair of the GIZ Management Board, said, ‘We welcome the Supervisory Board’s decision to appoint Ms Hoven as Managing Director. My colleague Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel and I are looking forward to working with her to cement GIZ’s role as a strong and effective partner in the field of international cooperation.’   

Hoven studied economics and political science and is a recognised expert in the field of international cooperation. She is also an alumna of the German Development Institute (DIE). She has been working in various international cooperation institutions for over 30 years and spent more than five years with one of GIZ’s predecessor organisations, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, as a government advisor in Guatemala and planning officer in Eschborn. From 2004 onwards she had responsibility as a manager in BMZ for a range of areas, including bilateral cooperation with Asia and Latin America and the reorientation of BMZ’s portfolio in fragile states and emerging economies. She has been Director-General for Global Issues at BMZ since 2014, focusing in particular on displacement and migration, governance, climate change mitigation and sustainability. Between 2010 and 2014 she represented the German Government as Executive Director in the World Bank Group. In this role she helped to embed climate action and sustainability goals within the new World Bank reform process. Following her appointment, Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven thanked the Supervisory Board for putting its trust in her: ‘GIZ is an important organisation in efforts to tackle global challenges. I am delighted that I will be able to make a substantial contribution to shaping these issues in this position of responsibility at GIZ.’