Speaker Overview

Kunt Schäfer, 43 years old, was born on the island of Rügen. He is the managing director of Weiße Flotte GmbH, based in Stralsund, and heads the Reederei Hiddensee GmbH and the Norddeutsche Binnenreederei. He volunteers as chairman of the Rügen tourism association.

Within the group of companies of Förde Reederei Seetouristik, he is in charge of future technologies, including green drives and traffic concepts.

Jörg Singer has been mayor of Helgoland since 2011. He studied industrial engineering in Germany and the USA and subsequently worked for various companies in the high-tech sector, including: Lufthansa. During his professional career, he learned to build, expand and rebuild companies. The result is a personal toolbox with experience and skills that he has been able to use since the millennium in corporate management and later in the establishment and management of their own companies. Perfect Day GmbH received the award for the most innovative consulting company in Schleswig-Holstein at the most important industrial fair in Germany. In the office of the mayor he was able to successfully shape important projects since then. Et al the revolutionization of transport links, the reduction of island debt, the establishment of a new economic sector, and last but not least the rise in customer numbers by 25 percent. To accompany Helgoland safely and sustainably into a new life cycle is his most comprehensive transformation project to date. He lives with his family at the Helgoland Lighthouse.

Hannah Marczinkowski, 30 years old, was born on the island of Föhr and has lived in Aalborg in northern Denmark since 2014. After studying environmental technology and sustainable energy planning, she now works on her dissertation about sustainable energies for islands. Amongst others, she is familiar with the islands of Samsø (DK), Orkney (UK) and Madeira (PT) due to the EU project SMILE, as well as with the possible roles of islands locally and globally.

Cornelius Obier studied business administration at the University of the German Armed Forces in Hamburg. After completing his studies, he worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Business Administration and Tourism Management at the University of Lüneburg from 1996-1998. Cornelius Obier is involved in the German Society for Tourism Sciences and was its managing director from 1997-1998. In 1998 he founded PROJECT M GmbH with two partners and has been a managing director since then. Since 2010 he has also been a managing director of the European Tourism Institute. Cornelius Obier has been the sole managing director of PROJECT M GmbH and the European Tourism Institute since 2016. He has already worked as a project manager in more than 1,000 touristic consultancy projects in Germany.