Kai Diekmann worked for Axel Springer media house for 30 years – among other positions he was publisher of Springer’s daily BILD and for 15 years he was its editor-in-chief. BILD is one of the largest news brands in Europe and reaches 39 million readers and users every month with its print edition and online website. Diekmann (*1964) is born in Ravensburg and grows up in Bielefeld. As a student at the Catholic Marienschule Ursulinen, he already edited the conservative school newspaper "Passepartout". After his high school diploma and military service, Kai Diekmann completed a two-year traineeship at Axel Springer, which took him to Hamburg, Bonn and New York. From 1987 to 1989 he was parliamentary correspondent for "BILD" and "BILD am SONNTAG" in Bonn. Until 1991 he was chief reporter of the people magazine "Bunte", which was published by Burda-Verlag. His career then took him to Berlin, where he became deputy editor-in-chief of B.Z.. Shortly afterwards, Diekmann was appointed deputy editor-in-chief and head of BILD's politics department. He remained in this position for five years. After a short trip through Central America, Kai Diekmann returned to Axel Springer in 1998 as editor-in-chief of WELT am SONNTAG. In 2001 he became editor-in-chief of BILD and in 2004 publisher of BILD and BILD am SONNTAG. In 2016 he finally became publisher of the entire BILD Group. In 2012/2013 Kai Diekmann spent 12 months in Silicon Valley to develop new entrepreneurial ideas for digital growth on the West Coast of the USA on behalf of Axel Springer. In 2017, he left Axel Springer Verlag at his own request to take on new tasks. In the same year, Diekmann has become a consultant to Uber. Since 2017, Diekmann has also been Global Advisor for the Next Media Accelerator (NMA), an acceleration program financed by more than 20 German and Austrian media companies for content-driven start-ups from Europe and Israel. Kai Diekmann is founder of the Zukunftsfonds and together with Philipp Jessen, former CEO of stern.de, and event and sports manager Michael Mronz, he founded the Berlin Start-Up Storymachine. From 2004 to 2018, Kai Diekmann was an independent member of the Board of Directors of Hürriyet and has been Non-Executive Director of the London Times since 2011. He is also the author and editor of several books.