Heusgen was Germany’s ambassador to the United Nations between 2017 and 2021. Prior to this appointment and since 2005, Heusgen was the Foreign Policy and Security Adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel. He served as Director of the Policy Unit for the European Union’s High Representative Javier Solana from 1999 to 2005.
Heusgen joined the German Foreign Service in 1980. He was posted to Chicago, Paris and Bonn. He is a graduate of the University of Saint Gallen in Switzerland and studied at Georgia Southern College in the United States and at the Sorbonne in Paris. He earned a post-graduate degree from the University of St. Gallen where he taught Political Science between 2020 and 2025.
He was Chairman of the Munich Security Conference between 2022 and 2025 and holds the position of Co-Conference Chairman of the St. Gallen Symposium.
The world Christoph Heusgen has spent his career navigating, from the UN Security Council to the chair of the Munich Security Conference, no longer runs on the old rules. Systemic competition has replaced consensus, “force vs. law” has replaced “West vs. East,” and Europe is being forced to ask what it can no longer outsource, including its own financial infrastructure. That question lands squarely on André Helfenstein’s desk. As Chairman of SIX, he runs critical infrastructure that must stay unshakeably stable as it transforms. In this fireside chat, André and Christoph will explore where geopolitics and market infrastructure actually meet: What a fracturing world order means for the rails our money runs on, and what it takes to lead through change without losing what makes an institution trusted.
