Dr. Jakob Peter has been Secretary-General and Managing Director of the Council of Experts on Climate Change (ERK) since September 2021. Before joining the ERK, he worked as Senior Manager Energy Systems & Sector Coupling at Enertrag AG (Berlin), in addition to his engagement in Strategy & Analysis at the startup Caphenia (Frankfurt / Berlin). He completed his studies in mechanical engineering at ETH Zurich and Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. He worked at Voith Hydro R&D Ocean Energies (Heidenheim and Inverness, Scotland), myclimate Carbon Offsetting (Zurich) and Climeworks (Zurich), among others. Subsequently, as a Fellow of the Mercator Kolleg for International Assignments, he worked as a consultant for Sustainable Investment Partners (Zurich), the German Federal Ministry for the Environment (Berlin) and the International Energy Agency IEA (Paris). From 2014 to 2019, he worked as a consultant at ewi Energy Research & Scenarios (Cologne) and completed a part-time PhD in economics at the Institute of Energy Economics (EWI) at the University of Cologne.

Cynthia Schmitt has been responsible for Communications as well as for the publications of the Council of Experts on Climate Change (ERK) since October 2022. As a North American Studies and German Studies student, she completed a DAAD-funded Bachelor Plus at Leipzig University with a study visit and publishing internship in the United States. During her Master’s at the Free University of Berlin, she worked for the Chair of the American Literature Department at the John F. Kennedy Institute (JFKI) and supported numerous German and English-language publication projects both organizationally and as an editor.

Stefania Smolkina has been working as the Team Assistant and Office Administrator at the office of the Council of Experts on Climate Change (ERK) since April 2025. Her background is as an artist and filmmaker with a focus on research. Since 2014, in addition to her artistic practice, she has gained extensive experience in press and public relations, video production, photo documentation, teaching and film mediation. She studied at the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design, at the Leipzig Academy of Visual, at the Iceland University of the Arts in Reykjavík and at Werkleitz PMMC for Documentary Practice in Halle (Saale).