Christoph Heusgen is a diplomat and Chairman of the Munich Security Conference. For more than a decade, he was the foreign and security policy advisor to Angela Merkel, whom he accompanied on all her trips abroad. His close ties with America and his comprehensive concept of security have shaped his career over the past decades. Christoph Heusgen is considered to have an excellent international network, right up to the upper echelons.

Ambassador Heusgen joined the Foreign Service in 1980 and his career took him to the German Consulate in Chicago and the German Embassy in Paris. For two years he headed the European Sub-Department at the Federal Foreign Office and subsequently the political staff of the High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union, Javier Solana.

Before taking over as Chair of the MSC, Ambassador Heusgen was Permanent Representative of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United Nations in New York from 2017 to 2021 and chaired the UN Security Council in April 2019 and July 2020.