The board of the Charta der Vielfalt association
Ana-Cristina Grohnert
Chairperson of the Board
Ana-Cristina Grohnert has been Chairperson of the Board of the Charta der Vielfalt employers’ initiative since 2013.
From 2017 to 2019 she was the board member responsible for human resources and internal services at Allianz Deutschland AG. As Managing Partner at Ernst & Young, she previously realigned the human resources strategy and advised clients in financial services in their restructuring and reorganization.
On the basis of this experience, as well as her bank and industry experience in financial and risk management at DGHYP, ABB and Preussag, she advises on and designs company transformations from the business and HR manager perspective. Since then, she has also published numerous publications and interviews. As book author, Ana-Cristina Grohnert is committed to more sustainability, diversity and respect in business. manager magazin and the Boston Consulting Group named Ana-Cristina Grohnert in 2019 as one of the most influential women in German business.
Ana-Cristina Grohnert has three children and lives in Hamburg.
Nina Straßner
Vice Chairperson of the Board
Nina Straßner is the “Head of Diversity and People Programs” at SAP Deutschland. She passed her first state examination after studying in Dresden, Sydney and Kiel. Her second state examination followed at the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf in 2008. Since then, she has been a barrister. After an international master’s degree program in media and copyright law at Stellenbosch University/S.A. and professional training as an international business mediator, she co-founded “Die Advocatur” law firm in Kiel with a focus on labour and insurance law, lectured at the business academy and at the same time started a family.
She has been a specialist in labour law since 2015. Thus, she has developed the legal and societal aspects of diversity management for herself into vocation, profession, and passion all at the same time. Her book “Keine Kinder sind auch keine Lösung” [No Children – Also Not a Solution], published in 2017, was nominated for the Women’s Business Literature Prize of the Handelsblatt, among others. Since 2020, she has taken great pleasure in writing a regular column in the Wirtschaftswoche.
In the fall of 2019, the DAX-listed corporation SAP invited her to join its management team. Today, as the “Head of Diversity and People Programs”, she is responsible for the corresponding human resources programs for 25,000 employees at SAP in Germany.
Dr. Eva Voß
Vice Chairperson of the Board
Dr. Eva Voß is the Head of Diversity, Inclusion and People Care Germany & Austria at BNP Paribas. Previously, she was responsible for Diversity & Inclusiveness, Health, Work-Life Dynamics and Employee Listening at Ernst & Young (EY) for several years, working as New Ways of Working team lead.
Dr. Voß studied political science, history and gender studies at the Universities of Freiburg and Brest. She received her doctorate in political science at the University of Freiburg; after obtaining her doctorate, she worked there for several years as head of the gender and diversity office.
As a keynote speaker and panelist, as well as author of several specialist publications, her focus is on unconscious bias, inclusive leadership, the culture of belonging, employee activation and governance structures to address equality. With her “Diversity Check” column in the Human Resources Manager magazine, she sheds light for professionals on the most important trends and developments in the area of diversity.
Frank Rusko
Treasurer
At Sanofi, Frank Rusko is the Diversity Lead for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and his employer’s inclusion officer for Germany. He is a member of Generation X, cisgender, hetero, married, father and grandfather. His social background: working class. His ethnicity: half Hessian and half Carpathian German.
He gained cross-functional experience during his working life in the areas of production, finances, purchasing and HR. He has a degree in business administration (FH-Mainz) and an M.Sc. in Consumer Health Care (University Medicine Berlin – Charité), and is a systemic coach.
In recent years, he was able to implement a number of topics at Sanofi, including initiating an action plan to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, launching a father network, developing Sanofi diversity weeks, introducing “Living and Working at Sanofi Awards” to promote role models with a number of categories (lived diversity, social responsibility, modern working and dream team), participating in the women and careers index, participating in PRIDE Champion “best workplaces” certification, and most recently kicking off a “Vereint in Vielfalt” diversity network.
Dr. Susanne von Below
Representative of the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration
Dr. Susanne von Below heads the “Education, Labour Market, Family, Research Coordination” division of the working staff of the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration in the Federal Chancellery.
Previously, as a policy officer and deputy division head in the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and at the European Commission, she was responsible for, inter alia, empirical, educational and university research and international educational comparison studies (e.g., PISA).
After general studies at the Leibniz Kolleg in Tübingen, she studied sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich. Her doctorate is from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University at Frankfurt am Main with a dissertation on educational systems and social inequality. She researched there and in the scope of post-doc positions at Harvard University and the European University Institute Florence, including on the educational and job market chances of people with an immigration history.
She has four adult sons.