About

She is, among other things, a member of the Supervisory Board of Munich Re, the Holtzbrinck Publishing Groupi.a. SpringerNature, Digital Science, Die Zeit, Macmillan Publishers, Fischer, Rowohlt, KiWi, Non-Executive Director of Adevinta ASAthe European online classifieds leader with market leading positions in key European markets (kleinanzeigen.de, mobile.de, leboncoin.fr etc.), > 10 bn € market cap, listed and a member of the European Advisory Board of Google Cloud.

Julia Jäkel is particularly engaged in the interscetion between business, politics and society. She serves as a member of the Supervisory Board of the German Press Agency DPA, and the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, is member of the Board of Trustees of the University Medical Center, Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKEone of Europe's largest university hospitals, owned by the State of Hamburg), and of the DFL Foundation (German Football League). She currently chairs the “Zukunftsrat”, the Council for the Reform of the German Public Broadcasting system.

Following her studies in history, political sciences, and economics at Heidelberg, Germany, Harvard, US, and Cambridge, UK, (MPhil), she started her career in 1997 with the Bertelsmann Entrepreneurs Program before joining Gruner+Jahr~ €1.6bn rev., i.a. Stern, Brigitte, Geo, Capital, 11Freunde, Landlust, chefkoch.de, shareholder of the SPIEGEL, Sächsische Zeitung, Territory, Applike Group and the leading French digital publisher Prisma Media (then 74.9% Bertelsmann) one year later. In 2012 Jäkel was called to the Executive Board of Gruner + Jahr; in 2013, she became its CEO. Under her leadership, Gruner + Jahr was fundamentally transformed, particularly through the development of digital offerings which made up over 50% of revenueannual report Bertelsmann / Gruner+Jahr 2021 in 2021. The profitability rose to 13,4 %annual report Bertelsmann / Gruner+Jahr 2021.

Jäkel became a member of the Bertelsmann Group Management Committee in 2013 and chaired the Bertelsmann Content Alliance right from its start, which coordinates the Bertelsmann content activities in Germany.

She has received numerous awards for her entrepreneurial and journalistic engagement: in 2016, she was named “Media Manager of the Year” (Kress), in 2017, “Media Woman of the Year” (Horizont), and in 2018, “Media Personality of the Year” (W&V). She has also regularly been named in Manager Magazin’s the “Top 100 Women in Germany” ranking.