Digital Excellence Forum 2027

Philipp Beckerle is full professor and head of the Chair of Autonomous Systems and Mechatronics at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg. His work centers on human-centered mechatronics and robotics, developing systems such as prostheses, exoskeletons and other applications built around close human-robot interaction. He earned his doctorate in mechatronics from TU Darmstadt and his habilitation from TU Dortmund and has been a visiting researcher at institutions including Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Arizona State University.

Photo: © FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg / Matthias Pracht / FATHER&SUN

Kristy Fenton is CTO at BLACKROLL AG, where she leads the company’s technology platform and its transformation from a product-based business into an AI-enabled recovery and longevity platform. Before joining BLACKROLL, she spent more than eight years at Adidas, most recently as Senior Director of Data & Science Product Ownership, where she helped scale the company’s data and AI capabilities. She is based in Amsterdam.

Florian Hillebrand is Head of IT (CIO) at Playmobil, responsible for the IT organization across the Playmobil and Lechuza brands within the Horst Brandstätter Group. He drives the digital transformation of the iconic toy brand, including initiatives such as the relaunch of the Playmobil webshop. He holds a Master’s in Leadership and Management and a Bachelor of Laws.

Daniel Metzler is Co-Founder and CEO of Isar Aerospace, the Munich-area company building the Spectrum orbital launch vehicle. He co-founded the company in 2018 with fellow TU Munich alumni, having previously led a 40-person student rocketry team at the university’s WARR research group. Under his leadership, Isar Aerospace became the first private company to launch an orbital-class rocket from continental Europe and has grown to more than 400 employees across five locations.

Joachim Nagel has served as President of the Deutsche Bundesbank since 2022, the tenth person to hold the office. An economist by training, he earned his PhD in economics from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and has spent much of his career at the heart of German and international finance. Before returning to lead the Bundesbank, he was Deputy Head of the Banking Department at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, served on the executive board of the KfW banking group and spent 17 years at the Bundesbank, six of them on its Executive Board. As President, he represents Germany’s central bank on the global stage, including in the governing bodies of the IMF and the Bank for International Settlements.

Photo: © Deutsche Bundesbank

Christian Redl is an Austrian freediver, underwater stuntman, speaker and author who has set multiple world records in extreme disciplines of freediving, from dives beneath closed ice sheets to the highest-altitude freedive, at 5,160 meters in the Himalayas. He discovered freediving at 17 and left a career in investment banking to pursue the sport full-time.

Photo: © Martin Aigner

Maximilian Wühr is Co-Founder and CEO of FINN, the Munich-based car subscription platform he co-founded in 2019. He initially led the company’s growth as Chief Growth Officer before taking over as CEO in 2023, scaling FINN into one of Europe’s fastest-growing mobility companies and expanding it into the US market. He studied economics at LMU Munich, with stops at Università Bocconi, the CDTM, and UC Berkeley.