Dr. Nina Smidt

Dr. Nina Smidt has been the Managing Director (CEO) and the Spokesperson of the Executive Board of Siemens Stiftung since 1 April 2020. Together with her colleague Robert Balthasar (CFO), she leads the foundation and is responsible for its day-to-day management, its strategic development, and its communications. As the Managing Director, she and her fellow board member also represent Siemens Stiftung in its role as the sole shareholder of WE!Hub Victoria Ltd., a social enterprisefounded by Siemens Stiftung in Kenya.

Under her leadership, the non-profit, international foundation works to advance sustainable social development and opening up opportunities, together with people and communities, to actively shape social and ecological transformation. Her work centers on three areas of action: Essential Services, Digitality, and Climate. The foundation meets the challenges in these fields collaboratively and treats them as opportunities for innovation and positive change. In its hands-on project work, it fosters access and participation, builds 21st century skills, and enables shared learning. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, Siemens Stiftung thus connects local action with global perspectives to strengthen resilience, social cohesion, and regenerative practices where they are needed most.

What guides Dr. Nina Smidt in this work is a firm conviction that social change succeeds best where people and communities shape it themselves. This idea runs through everything she does, building partnerships and linking local engagement with international perspectives. For her, challenges are less an obstacle than a starting point for new ideas and for lasting, positive change. This approach is grounded in her broad international expertise in education, sustainability, and international policy. She places particular emphasis on strengthening international relationships and partnerships as well as social innovation. Added to this are areas she has grown into over the years:social entrepreneurship, geostrategy, and the development of sustainable fundraising strategies. Her 1 deep understanding of sustainable social development as a holistic process – with economic, ecological, and social dimensions – also enables her to design and implement effective management strategies for transformation processes, change management, and New Work initiatives.

This wealth of experience goes back a long way: more than 20 years of international leadership across educational institutions, academic bodies, think tanks, and foundations have shaped her path. Before joining Siemens Stiftung, she headed the US foundation of the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius in New York from 2010 to 2020 and, in parallel, served as Head of International Planning and Development at the ZEIT-Stiftung in Hamburg from 2011 to 2020. Prior to that, from 2006 to 2011, she was Managing Director of Bucerius Education GmbH at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, where she led the Executive Education, Conference Management, and Consulting divisions – having previously served as Deputy Managing Director of the International Center for Graduate Studies at the University of Hamburg.

Her path, however, began in academia: Dr. Nina Smidt is a linguist and cultural theorist by training, holding a doctorate in the field. She wrote her dissertation on critical literary theory at the University of Hamburg before receiving postdoctoral fellowships at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University in the US and at the University of Haifa in Israel. This followed studies in German, English, and Education at the University of Hamburg and in Political and Cultural Studies at the University ofTechnology in Sydney; she later added an EMBA from the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin. She has also completed executive and board development programs at Harvard Business School, the Yale School of Management, Columbia Business School, and WHU / IESE.

Dr. Nina Smidt is involved in German and international advisory boards:
– Federal Association of German Foundations (Bundesverband Deutscher Stiftungen), Berlin
– LATIMPACTO (Impact Investing for Latin America), Bogotá
– Chair of the Board of Trustees, Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung (from 1 October 2026)