News & Events

Networks, Knowledge Sharing, Triangular Cooperation and Cooperation Agencies, Sectoral Department, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, GIZ, Eschborn, Germany

Dr. Ulrich Müller specializes in development policy, networks, funds, knowledge sharing and trilateral cooperation. Ulrich also works as a university teacher at Darmstadt Technical University and has published a couple of books on development related issues.

Carolina de la Lastra has worked in the field of development cooperation since 1988, collaborating with international organizations such as GIZ, World Bank, Canadian Cooperation Agency, Swiss Cooperation Agency, FAO, Economic Commission for Latin America CEPAL and many others.  As a consultant she has worked with multi-stakeholder development initiatives from the public and private sector, as well as the civil society in most Latin American countries, mainly planning and evaluating projects, as well as training teams in cooperation project management.

Pioneering in triangular cooperation with GIZ from 2009 onwards, she has worked for the Iberoamerican Program for the Strengthening of South South Cooperation since 2011.

Hagen Ettner holds the position as the Germany Director of CSD in GIZ China since the opening of the Center in May 2017. He joined GIZ in 2005 and served in several positions in Berlin and Eschborn before moving to Tajikistan in 2012. There he worked in a flagship economic development programme which focussed on agricultural value chain development, rural inclusive growth and economic resilience. From 2015 he headed the British-German co-funded programme.

Alexandra Behns joined GIZ in 2011, where she first worked for an in-house agency and think tank in the field of business development and marketing. She then joined GIZ‘s strategy unit at headquarters in 2015, before moving to China in May 2018, to work in a regional project on sustainability in the textile and garment industry in Asia. In GIZs regional program “Fostering and Advancing Sustainable Business and Responsible Industrial Practices in the Clothing Industry in Asia” (FABRIC), she is now responsible for coordinating activities in the field of regional exchange and regional cooperation and the cooperation with the relevant stakeholders is China.

Matthias Bach works at GIZ in Beijing in the China country component of the Global Project Quality Infrastructure, where he has the role of portfolio manager. He also implements a public-private partnership project in the healthcare sector. His academic background is economics and politics, having studied in the UK, Hongkong and Beijing.

Jan-Patrick Schnell is a project director at GIZ in Beijing, where he currently leads the China country component of the Global Project Quality Infrastructure, facilitating political and technical dialogues on the regulatory frameworks needed to ensure the quality and safety of tradable goods and services.Previously, Jan-Patrick served as deputy head of division with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in Berlin.  He started his career as a development professional with the Robert Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart and then joined the United Nations, with postings in New York, Nairobi and Cairo.

Sabine Porsche graduated in Cultural Anthropology from Philipps-University in Marburg. She joined Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Beijing in 2017, where she heads the team Society and Labour. Topics of interest are elderly care and education. From 2007 to 2016 Sabine held different positions at Tongji University in Shanghai. She held the position as German Vice-Director of the Sino-German University of Applied Sciences and besides established the DAAD Career Academy.