Work experience

Until 2015, Alexander Haentzschel headed the press and public relati­ons of the Cluster of Excel­lence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” at Heidelberg Univer­sity. In 80 projects, around 250 scien­tists resear­ched the dynamics of trans­cul­tu­ral flows. In 2012, the organiza­tion once again gained funding from the Excel­lence Initia­tive of the German federal and state governments.

Before that, Alexander Haentzschel worked as team leader at Solid­Ground, coordi­na­ting the digital commu­ni­ca­tion of a multi­na­tio­nal corpo­ra­tion in German-speaking count­ries. He also worked as a journa­list in a news bureau in Southe­ast Asia. His artic­les have been published – among others – in the Frank­fur­ter Allge­meine Zeitung, Das Parla­ment and the Swiss Sonntags­Zei­tung.

He has advised the PR agency Story­ma­ker and its clients on public relati­ons in Asia, prepared execu­ti­ves for their assign­ments in China as an inter­cul­tu­ral trainer at Eidam & Partner and analy­zed consu­mer behavior in China for the agency Trend­bu­reau Hamburg.

He also built up a network for young journa­lists and a web catalo­gue for media produ­cers, which he later sold to a publi­shing company.

International experience

Funded by the Founda­tion of the German Economy (SDW), Alexander Haentzschel studied Cultu­ral Studies / Aesthe­tics and Southe­ast Asian Studies and recei­ved his docto­rate from the Humboldt Univer­sity in Berlin. Both in his master’s thesis and in his disser­ta­tion, he analy­zed the develo­p­ment of the media and news flows in certain regions of Asia.

He spent semes­ters abroad at Hong Kong Univer­sity and the Natio­nal Univer­sity of Singa­pore. He resear­ched at the School of Orien­tal and African Studies of the Univer­sity of London, in the archi­ves of the UNESCO headquar­ters in Paris and at the Asian Media Infor­ma­tion and Commu­ni­ca­tion Center at Nanyang Techno­lo­gi­cal Univer­sity in Singapore.

Alexander Haentzschel has parti­ci­pa­ted in numerous confe­ren­ces inclu­ding the Harvard Project for Asian and Inter­na­tio­nal Relati­ons, the Asia Future Leaders Forum, the Asia-Europe Young Leaders Sympo­sium, the World News Media Congress, the Inter­na­tio­nal Media Confe­rence and the Asia-Pacific Confe­rence of German Business.

Some of these activi­ties were funded by organiza­ti­ons such as the German Research Founda­tion (DFG) and the German Acade­mic Exchange Service (DAAD).

As a further univer­sity degree, Alexander Haentzschel comple­ted a double degree Execu­tive Master of Business Adminis­tra­tion (MBA) at the Mannheim Business School and Tongji Univer­sity in Shang­hai. He then published a book on German-Chinese business networks with the scien­ti­fic publisher Springer.

Alexander Haentzschel was selec­ted for the Execu­tive Develo­p­ment Program by SRH Holding. In this context, he was invol­ved in a project develo­ping a group-wide innova­tion manage­ment system.

Most recently, Alexander Haentzschel comple­ted the Program for Leader­ship Develo­p­ment at Harvard Business School.