About

She serves as a member of the Supervisory Board of Munich Re AG and the Holtzbrinck Publishing Groupi.a. SpringerNature, Digital Science, Die Zeit, Macmillan Publishers, Fischer, Rowohlt, KiWi. Until its delisting in 2024, she was a 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 at the intersection of business, politics and society serving on the supervisory boards of the German Press Agency DPA, and the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie and on the Board of Trustees of the University Medical Center, Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKEone of Europe's largest university hospitals, owned by the State of Hamburg), as well as Deputy Chair of the DFL Foundation (German Football League).

Most recently, together with the former Federal Ministers Thomas de Maizière and Peer Steinbrück and the former President of Germany's Federal Constitutional Court Andreas Voßkuhle, she co-initiated the "Initiative for a State Capable of Acting".

From 2023 to 2024, she chaired the "Future Council on Public Broadcasting Reform," a high-level expert council tasked with developing recommendations for the modernization of Germany’s 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. In 2021, she left Gruner + Jahr and Bertelsmann.

For her entrepreneurial and editorial leadership she has received numerous awards. In 2025, she will be awarded the Ludwig Erhard Prize by the Ludwig Erhard Foundation. She was named "Media Manager of the Year" (Kress, 2016), "Media Woman of the Year" (Horizont, 2017), and "Media Personality of the Year" (W&V, 2018), and is regularly listed among the "Top 100 Women in Germany" by Manager Magazin.

Julia Jäkel is the mother of twins. Together with her husband, journalist and author Ulrich Wickert, she founded the Ulrich Wickert Foundation under the umbrella of Plan International Germany, supporting children’s rights worldwide.