Board of Trustees

Gerrit Ahlers is VP & Director of Consulting Services at the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Midwest, Inc., the official trade arm of the German government. He heads the consulting department of AHK USA-Chicago.

Prior to joining AHK USA-Chicago, Mr. Ahlers held a senior role with a mid-sized management consulting firm, where he was responsible for establishing and expanding the U.S. office. ​

In his previous positions, Mr. Ahlers has been active in Europe, Australia, and North America. Mr. Ahlers holds an MBA degree from the University of Bremen with a focus on brand management, sustainable and strategic management. During is undergrad he attended Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA.

Mr. Ahlers serves as a board member at the "Friends of Goethe" of the Goethe-Institut Chicago.

Petra M. Blix was born in Frankfurt, Germany. She received her Ph.D. in 1989 from the University of Chicago, and has worked as a research technician, high school teacher, and business manager. Petra is involved in many of Chicago’s clubs, advisory groups, and community organizations. She has been an active member of the Chicago Columbia Club since 1995 and has served as the club’s Treasurer since 2008.

Petra is very passionate about conservation efforts, and is restoring land in Indiana with native plants, shrubs, and trees. In her free time, she enjoys bird watching, nature photography, and gardening.

George Chao was born in Taiwan but grew up in Hamburg, Germany. Equipped with a Diplom-Kaufmann degree and an MBA, he has spent the last two decades working in the Consumer Goods and Retail industries for companies such as McKinsey, Target, Mars, and Vosges Haut-Chocolat. He is currently the CEO of Jetson, a pioneer in the gut health and probiotics space. His favorite job, though, was his two years as a stay-at-home dad starting when his daughter Scarlett turned 3 years old. She has been attending GISC since 2013, and the two of them speak exclusively German with each other. George has been involved in parent life from the very beginning and was the founder of the Kaffeekränzchen (parent coffee meet) at GISC.

Jon Ebner was born in the United States but has spent a number of years living abroad in Europe, including Switzerland, Holland, and Germany. Before moving to Chicago, he spent four years in Cologne as Resident US Counsel at Gerling Allgemeine Versicherungs AG. In 2006, he moved to Chicago and joined Baker & McKenzie LLP, where he is currently a partner in the firm’s Global Dispute Resolution and Global Insurance practices. He represents US and international companies in a variety of commercial disputes. Jon and his wife are convinced of the benefits of an international and multilingual education for their children, and are committed to making such opportunities available to interested families in the Chicago area.

Andre Fiebig is a partner in the law firm of Quarles & Brady LLP. He has law degrees both in the U.S. and Germany. He teaches at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago as well as Bucerius Law School in Germany. Andre and his wife, a curator of contemporary art, are committed to helping community programs such as German International School Chicago.

Mike Franke was the Chief, State Government Contracts for National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) before he retired at the end of 2017. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering from Washington University (St. Louis) and a Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). His entire career was in the railway industry in various operations and engineering positions and prior to joining Amtrak, he was Vice President & Chief Engineer of BNSF Railway. Mike is a Registered Professional Engineer.

Kurt Gamauf is VP of Human Resources at RX, a global events and exhibitions business, part of the RELX group. A native of Austria, Kurt began his initial studies of International Business Administration at the University of Vienna, Austria. He came to the US on a soccer scholarship where he obtained his Bachelor’s of Business degree from Western Illinois University. He then earned an MBA degree from the Krannert Graduate School of Management at Purdue University.

Kurt is married to Erica Nathan-Gamauf, former foreign language department head at Marist High School and now Spanish teacher at Loyola Academy. Their son Leopold and daughter Lilia are students at GISC.

Before joining the GISC as Interim Director, Ben most recently served as the Director of Administration at the German International School Washington, DC. Prior to that, Ben held several leadership positions at US-based private independent schools, including headships at Madison Country Day School, an authorized IB World School, and at Quest Academy, a gifted education school in the Chicago suburbs. Ben’s career in education began at the Atlanta International School where he started as a German and History Teacher and eventually became Head of Middle School, a position in which he helped the school earn authorization for the International Baccalaureate’s Middle Years Program. He holds undergraduate degrees in English and Intercultural Studies, a graduate degree in Communications, and a master’s level certification in gifted education. Ben grew up in Munich, Germany, is bilingual, and also has additional proficiency in Spanish and French. He and his wife Joy have five children, three of whom are currently in college and law school.

Originally from Nürnberg, Germany, Karin moved to the U.S. in 2014. Karin has 15 years' experience spearheading professional medical development programs and leading corporate marketing and communications teams. Karin currently works for Siemens Healthineers, Molecular Imaging heading Global Education Services. Karin is a Technologist in Radiology, Radiation Therapy, and Nuclear Medicine holding a Master's degree in Business Organization and an Executive MBA, specializing in General Management. In addition, she also serves as a board member at the "Friends of Goethe" of the Goethe-Institut Chicago.

Karin's daughter Myla is a student at GISC.

Sabrina Pierrard is a Senior Vice President of Communications Strategy and Cultural Fluency, based in Chicago, IL, USA on behalf of Publicis Groupe. She uncovers and distills information about people to illuminate meaning that matters for her clients’ businesses. Her 20+ years of experience spans the start-up world, technology giants, financial services, and more recently retail and QSR; she has overseen this globally for Microsoft Commercial Solutions, Airbnb, Twitter, Houzz and Avast to name a few. She has managed this work domestically for Bank of America, Panera Bread, Molson Coors and worked in various marketing roles at Discover Financial Services and Cars.com.

Marius was born in Cologne, Germany, and has since lived and worked in Europe, Latin America, and North America. He is currently the Global Vice President, Consulting at Bullhorn, a Software as a Service (SaaS) company headquartered in Boston, MA. He has spent his career selling and delivering large scale business and IT transformations for the Fortune 1000 across various industries.
 

Marius holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer & Electrical Engineering from the University of Dayton, a Master of Science in Computer Science from Stanford University, and a Master of Business Administration from IE Business School, Madrid, Spain. Marius is married to Elizabeth who is also involved in various volunteer activities at GISC. Their son and daughter have already been attending GISC for a few years and continue to thrive in a multilingual environment.

Denise Meuser is Professor of Instruction at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, where she coordinates the Beginning German Program and serves as Director of the Berlin: Global City in the Center of Europe exchange program. Denise grew up speaking German in Indiana. She and her husband have two children and visit family often in Bremen, Germany. She has a B.A. from DePauw University, an M.A. from Indiana University, Bloomington and studied abroad at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen and the Freie Universität Berlin.  Her professional interests focus on second language acquisition, technology in the classroom and the teaching of culture and language across the curriculum.

Mariam Pahl was born in Tehran and educated at the German School of Tehran. She completed a degree in business (Diplom-Betriebswirt) at the Universität Hamburg. After working in marketing for a fashion company in Munich, she joined her husband in his international assignments in Zurich, Bern, Stockholm, Greenwich, CT, London, and now in Chicago. She was very involved in the PTAs at her children’s schools. She served as the President of Chicago Columbia Club and has been involved with the German International School Chicago from the beginning. Mariam Pahl was President of the Board from 2012-2015.

Brian Pollina has been a media sales executive for going on two decades. Brian attended Cornell University in Ithaca, NY for undergrad and earned his law degree and M.B.A. from the University of Illinois in Champaign.

Born in Chicago and raised in north suburban Glenview, Brian has lived abroad in Seville, Spain and Cologne, Germany. He now returns frequently to Düsseldorf, Germany, his wife Vera’s hometown. Vera, the director of the HEAR Scholarship Foundation, previously taught at GISC as a German Literature, French, and Music instructor. Brian and Vera have been deeply involved with GISC since 2012, with two daughters who attended since they began preschool.

Julie Steffen was born in Berlin, Germany and studied European Business Administration in Cambridge, UK. Julie lived and worked throughout Germany, Luxemburg and China, where she joined JLL, a global real estate company, before moving to Silicon Valley and then Chicago in 2012. Most recently Julie led JLL’s International Desk, a team of global real estate experts, assisting clients with their needs around the world. She has been on sabbatical since the birth of their second daughter. Julie graduated as an Emerging Leader, Class 2017 of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Julie and her husband have been involved with the German International School Chicago for many years. They currently have one daughter attending preschool at the GISC. The gift of a bilingual, IB education is highly cherished by the entire family.

Rhonda Duffaut is a former German language and literature professor from Pennsylvania State University, where she taught courses before moving to San Francisco, CA. In San Francisco she taught English, history, and ESL at the German-American International School. As the Head of the English Department there, she played an essential role in establishing an interdisciplinary curriculum as the school gained its International Baccalaureate accreditation. She and her German husband were founding parents of Kinderhaus, a German language preschool in San Francisco.

Kirsten Greco is a freelance graphic and web designer. She has a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing from the University of Notre Dame and worked for several years in marketing at General Electric and in advertising for Chicago-based ad agency The Weinstein Organization. Kirsten joined her husband on an international assignment in 2000 in Hamburg, Germany, where their son was born, returning to Chicago in 2006. Kirsten and her husband have been involved with German School Chicago since 2008, their son attends German School Chicago, and Kirsten served as President of the GSC Parent Organization from 2010-2012 and as its Vice-President until, 2015 when she moved to Colorado.

Annegret Harnischfeger, Professor (ret.) of Education & Social Policy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Prior positions in Education at the University of Chicago, Stanford University, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung (M-P- Institute for Educational Research), Berlin, Deutscher Bildungsrat (German Council on Education), Bonn, Germany. Her research includes teaching-learning processes, school administration and evaluation. Dr. Harnischfeger was the Director of GISC from 2010-2015.