Tanja Gönner

Tanja Gönner, born 1969 in Sigmaringen, Baden-Württemberg, studied law at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen after completing her training as a legal clerk in the senior judicial service. After completing the first and second state examinations in law, she completed her legal clerkship at the Ravensburg Regional Court. From 1996-1999 she worked for a law firm. After being admitted to the bar, she became a partner there in 1999 with a focus on insolvency law (until 2004).

Tanja Gönner started her political career in 1986 in the Junge Union, has been a member of the CDU since 1987 and was a member of the federal executive committee from 2000 to 2012. From 2002 to 2004 Tanja Gönner was a member of the German Bundestag. In 2004 she became Minister of Social Affairs for the state of Baden-Württemberg. In 2005 she took over the Ministry of the Environment, which she headed until the beginning of 2010. From February 2010 to May 2011 Tanja Gönner was Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Transport of the State of Baden-Württemberg and from 2011 to 2012 a member of the state parliament. As part of her political activities, she took part in the World Climate Conference in Poznan in 2008 and in the follow-up conference in Copenhagen in 2009. Since July 2012 Tanja Gönner has been the spokesperson for the board of the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) GmbH.

Tanja Gönner represents GIZ on the Board of Directors of sequa gGmbH and in various business associations, such as the Presidium of the Hessian business associations. She also performs numerous voluntary activities, including being a member of the board of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, the advisory board of the Federal Academy for Security Policy, the national platform “Education for Sustainable Development”, the Agora-Verkehrswende council, the Arnold-Bergstrasse Institute (University of Freiburg) and the Advisory Board of the State Government of Baden-Württemberg for Sustainable Development. She is also a member of the supervisory board of Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH (dena) and the supervisory board of the Liebenau Foundation.