Meet the team
Aid Pioneers is comprised of more than 40 volunteers and full-time employees that leverage their diverse skills and backgrounds to deliver maximum impact.
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Co-Founder & Managing Director
Alexis holds an MSc in Political Science from the London School of Economics and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of York. Through his work at Aid Pioneers and his interdisciplinary academic studies, he strives to adopt diverse viewpoints to devise effective solutions to complex yet often overlooked problems in global development cooperation.
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Co-Founder & Managing Director
Julian has read English Law at King's College London and is currently preparing for his German State Examination at Humboldt University in Berlin. He also holds a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Durham and was an assistant teacher at Colby College in Maine, USA.
Through his work at Aid Pioneers, but also through his diverse academic background (between common law and civil law), he seeks to build international bridges and promote international cooperation.
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Member of the Supervisory Board
Siona works on all strategic questions and uses her experience to guide Aid Pioneers in the process of growth.
She has a B.S. in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and spent two years at McKinsey & Co. in Washington, D.C. and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where she supported the rollout of a pan-African health response and developed government strategies to support women's health in low- and middle-income countries.
Currently, Siona is with the Global Fund fighting HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.
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Director of Business Development
As Director of Business Development, Alex Brandl is on a mission to position Aid Pioneers as the leading force in delivering medical supplies and solar installations to underserved areas worldwide. Building on her background of consulting at McKinsey, co-founding her own start-up fighting single-use plastic, and conducting field research in Sierra Leone, her role involves growing Aid Pioneers’ network of donors and project partners to enact meaningful change.
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Co-Lead Medical
After her legal studies, Mareike gained a PhD in law and a wide range of professional experience in both corporate and legal fields. As a result, she supports AidPioneers in a multidimensional role that includes the implementation of medical projects as well as their financing and legal issues.
Mareike has already worked intensively on human rights issues, particularly in Africa, as part of her law studies and several volunteer work experiences. Having gained this expertise, she now wants to make an active contribution at Aid Pioneers toward ensuring that people in crisis regions have equal access to crucial resources and that their rights are recognized.
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Founders Associate
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Member of the Supervisory Board
As board member of Aid Piooeers, Theresa advises on Aid Pioneers’ strategy and positioning. She join d Aid Pioneers from McKinsey & Company, for half a year and helped buwlh up the Selar sector before returning to a role at McKinsey. re she has worked for more than two years. Having founded her own NGO and working with Ashoka, Theresa’s expertise in the private and civil sectors and her positive, impact-driven attitude are invaluable to our team!
Theresa is passionate about ESG and business’ potential to do good. She is a perfect fit for AP as we develop programmes to involve the private sector in sustainable, community-driven development projects.
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Director of Solar
Henri co-leads the solar projects at Aid Pioneers to help schools and hospitals in the transition from diesel generators to solar systems. Next to managing the sizing and procurement of solar systems he divides his remaining time for Aid Pioneers between HR and legal topics. As a fully qualified lawyer Henri coordinates the motivated legal volunteers to draft contracts, solve diverse legal challenges and ensures that Aid Pioneers conforms with national and international regulations.
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Co-Lead Gender Equality
Lisa co-leads the Gender Equality workstream, which aims at working with organizations that to achieve gender equality and support all women and girls. Alongside her team, she focuses on topics such as addressing menstrual health and fighting sexual and gender-based violence.
Lisa holds a BA in International Relations and Development Studies from the University of Utrecht and a MSc in Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Lisa works in FDI strategy, advising on location strategy, in particular talent and labour availability, attraction and retention, as well as cost, business and regulatory environments and logistics and connectivity.
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Co-Lead Medical
Michael co-leads the Aid Pioneers medical procurement department. In this role, he is responsible for all projects that help our hospital partners to provide to health care to more people.He joins Aid Pioneers from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, where he serves as a Strategy Associate in the Office of the CEO. Previously, Michael was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company and a Policy Advisor to the Mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford and Columbia University.
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Team member of the Gender Equality and Marketing Team
Bachelor in Conflict Studies and Political Science. Pursuing a Master’s in Conflict Resolution and Governance from September 2023 at the University of Amsterdam and the University of St. Andrews
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Gender Equality Team Member
Olga is currently pursuing her bachelors degree in sociology at the university of Amsterdam. In the gender equality team she mainly focuses on research on possible future partners. Olga plans on starting a masters degree in September, either in Global management in Rome or in international development politics at Kings college in London.
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Founding Sponsor & Strategic Advisor
Christiane has a Magister in German Studies and History from LMU. She worked as a journalist for ZDF in New York City and London. Alongside being a mother of 6, she founded a refugee organization in Oberursel, Germany, and later a Language Learning NGO called "Combox," both focused on the better integration of refugees into German society. She now runs the Altenburg Foundation.
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Markting Consultant
Niko holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of British Columbia and is completing an MSc in Data Science and Digital Marketing from Emlyon Business School in Paris, France.
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Strategic Advisor
Brian is an educator and researcher with extensive experience in teaching, education leadership and safeguarding/child protection, as well as training for teachers and school leaders. He has particular expertise within conflict-affected, fragile and economically deprived contexts, working at local, regional and national levels in a range of countries. His most recent focus has been with community-led NGOs supporting refugee children and young adults in Lebanon, Uganda, Turkey and northern Syria through non-formal education provision, schools, vocational training and in facilitating access to higher education.
He holds Masters degrees from Oxford University and UCL Institute of Education, and his doctoral research with Kingston University builds on his experience in education in emergencies.
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Project Management Gender Equality and Human Resources
With great passion for gender equality and education, Magdalena currently assisting in project management and a number of HR topics.
Magdalena is a Mexican lawyer with a background in Human Rights and holds a Master in Mediation and conflict management from the University of Cadiz. Her working experience is mostly focused in corporate law, contract negotiation, and stakeholder ́s management.
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Lead HR & Member of the Supervisory Board
After having been with Aid Pioneers from the very beginning as one of the Co-Founders, Nikolai is now a member of the supervisory board. On an operational level, he is responsible for the Ukraine project and all topics around HR.
After having studied Business Administration in Munich, Nikolai moved to Berlin where he worked in a Startup in Business Development and Project Management. Currently, he is living his best life in Paris where he is also studying at HEC Paris and Ecole Polytechnique.
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Lead Tech Department
Jane co-leads the Technology team, overseeing the development of our logistics tracking tool, website maintenance and our ongoing WEB3 partnerships.
Jane is a full time software engineer at Endeavor Streaming and actively been in WEB3 and startup space where she was part of the founding team for Hopin, an interactive virtual events company.
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Valeria is part of our Funding Department communicating with multiple stakeholders and partners. She's part of the Gender Equality Department and Emergency Response for Ukraine.
Valeria is currently pursuing her Masters at Mannheim University, focusing on American Studies and Nonprofit Management. She has worked for a female founders hub and is passionate about contributing to a world of equal opportunity.
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Gender Equality and Clean Energy Advisor
After attaining a four-year BSc Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science, Dina recently graduated with an MPhil in Management from the University of Cambridge. Beyond her studies, she gained first-hand experience across industries through internships in consulting, public sector, renewable energy, financial services, media and start-ups.
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Co-Lead Medical
Janice co-leads the Aid Pioneers medical procurement department. In this role, she is responsible for all projects that help our hospital partners to provide to health care to more people.Besides her work at Aid Pioneers, Janice studies the Master's Programme in Biomedicine at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, and at the Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. Her research is focused on translational and personalized medicine; studying the molecular mechanisms that drive cancer onset and progression she aims to develop novel diagnostic tools to improve early diagnosis of cancer.
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Co-Lead Marketing Department
Gillian co-leads the Marketing department, ensuring that Aid Pioneers can tell its story clearly and effectively across social media as well as internal and external communications. She works on developing cohesive content to showcase our team and projects and crafts Aid Pioneer's tone of voice.
Gillian previously worked as a Senior Copywriter at Ogilvy New York for clients fighting hiring bias and advocating for gun control, alongside work for IBM, Samsung, and Audi. She is currently pursuing her M.S. in Journalism at Columbia, while freelance writing for film and commercial projects.
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Legal Team
Alexander finished his first state exam in Mannheim and is currently studying for a PhD in corporate law while doing his legal clerkship in Berlin. He puts his training into practice as part of the legal team.
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Supervisory Board Member
Sophie advises Aid Pioneers on strategic topice as a member of the supesvisory board. After working full time for Aid Pioneers as Partnerships Manager she is now works for the red cross in Geneva. Sophie holds a BA in Economics and Psychology from the University of Aberdeen and an MA in Development Studies from the Geneva Graduate Institute. Through internships and research consultancies, she has previously gained experience in the fields of access to finance, impact investment and development cooperation in different country contexts.
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Marketing Team
Laura is part of the social media team and works mainly on the AP LinkedIn channel. She is also part of the AP South Africa project.Laura is finishing her BSc. in business administration at the University of Munich. Due to her international upbringing, she speaks four languages and has international experience, which she hopes will help her in her work with AP.
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Tech Team
Besides working with AP, Jon works as an engineer at Depop - a London-based circular-fashion reselling platform - where he mainly builds backend services to power the app features. Prior to Depop, Jon helped build out the Guardian's award-winning website as well as their data engineering platform. All of this came after having received a BSc from the University of Manchester and working as Forensic Data Analyst for a few years before the urge to build and tinker in tech brought him back to software engineering.
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Funding Department
Stephan is member of the Funding department. Besides direct funding supports for aid projects (most recently for the Ukraine), he works on a sustainable funding strategy for Aid Pioneers.Stephan holds a B.Sc in Economics and Politics from the University of Cologne and is currently working on his master's degree in Public Economics at the Free University of Berlin. Besides AP and his studies, he loves doing sports (especially running and table tennis) and is commited to the Special Olympics movement, a sports organization for people with intellectual disabilities.
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Legal Team
Paul is part of the legal department. He is responsible for a variety of legal matters that range from drafting contracts for the cooperation with partners and researching project specific regulations to handling structural topics that occur within a fast growing NGO.
Having finished his law studies with the first state exam in Frankfurt, Paul is currently studying for a PhD in history of law about civil uprisings in 17th century Europe.
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Gaspard is part of the Fundraising team with a particular focus on foundations. In this role, he is responsible for seeking out and applying to international foundations likely to fund our projects.
Gaspard has a master's degree in philosophy and worked for nearly 5 years at the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, raising funds from companies and managing the accounts of major sponsorship partners.
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Member of the Supervisory Board
Constantin has worked as an engineer for a medtech start-up in Berlin helping to build a rapid COVID diagnostic device. He is currently studying towards a master's degree in engineering at ETH Zurich where he is focussing on rehabilitation robotics.
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Co-Lead Impact Measurement & Deputy Chairwoman of the Supervisory Board
Paulina works to developing a monitoring and evaluation framework for Aid Pioneers. Her current focus is on quantifying the previous activities of the organisation.Paulina is a pre-doctoral researcher at the Institute for World Economy (IfW) in Kiel, where she researches about Chinese investments in developing countries. She holds a MSc in Development Studies and Economics from the London School of Economics and a BA in Sociology, Politics and Economics from Zeppelin University. Paulina collected numerous practical experiences, founding several small NGOs herself, working in the German Foreign Ministry and the German Development Cooperation (GIZ).
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Solar Venture Development
Jakob holds a master degree in Economics and Energy Tecenology and advises o all technical aspects of the solar projects.
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Wenzel is currently implementing an impact monitoring and evaluation framework for Aid Pioneers' clean energy access projects and activities.
He is pursuing a master's degree in accounting and finance at the University of St. Gallen.
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Hannah is a senior at Williams College, pursuing a B.A. in Political Economy and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies. She has worked with several nonprofit organizations in the past, mainly related to educational equity and advocacy for marginalized groups.
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Member of the Supervisory Board
Philipp finished his first state exam in Hamburg and is doing his legal clerkship in Frankfurt. He puts his training into practice in the the Aid Pioneers legal team. In addition, he is part of the supervisory board.
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Besides volunteering at Aid Pioneers, Vinzenz works as a Private Markets Specialist at HPS Investment Partners, Munich. Here he helps clients with investments in Private Markets, focusing on Private Equity. He holds a MSc in Computational Finance from UCL and a BA in Corporate Management & Economics from Zeppelin University
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Marketing
Jannes is responsible for public relations of the international aid projects at Aid Pioneers. In his role, he supports the external communication of current projects and works closely with journalists and the social media team.
Jannes holds a Bachelor of Science in communication & media management. Besides his work at Aid Pioneers, he works as a Junior Public Relations Consultant at a German public relations agency in Hamburg.
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Co-Founder
Martina holds an M.Sc. in Environment and Development from the University of Edinburgh and gained professional experience in strategic consulting projects and scaling processes.
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Co-Founder
Marcel co-founded Aid Pioneers and is one of our fulltime-employed board members. He is always on the search for promising new NGOs.Marcel holds a MSc. in Economics for Development from the University of Oxford, a B.S. in Economics and a B.A. in Philosophy from Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich. Previously, he worked as an assistant teacher in Chittagong, Bangladesh, and in multiple research positions.
Interested in joining? Check out our open positions!
