Kai Diekmann

Founder and Shareholder
Deutsche Fondsgesellschaft (DFG) and Storymachine
Germany

Kai Diekmann was born on 27 June 1964 in Ravensburg. Until January 2017 he was the publisher of BILD. Before, he was the editor-in-chief of BILD for 15 years.

BILD is one of the largest news brands in Europe and reaches 39 million readers and users every month with the BILD newspaper and bild.de.

After graduating from high school and military service, Kai Diekmann completed a two-year traineeship at Axel Springer, which took him to Hamburg, Bonn and New York.

In 1987, Diekmann became parliamentary correspondent for BILD and BILD am SONNTAG in Bonn and in 1989 moved to Munich as chief reporter for the magazine “Bunte”.

Two years later, his path led him to Berlin, where he became deputy editor-in-chief of B.Z.. Shortly afterwards, Diekmann was appointed deputy editor-in-chief and head of BILD’s politics department. He remained in this position for five years.

After a stay in Central America, Kai Diekmann returned to Axel Springer in 1998 as editor-in-chief of WELT am SONNTAG. In 2001, he was appointed editor-in-chief of BILD and publisher of BILD and BILD am SONNTAG.

In 2012/2013, Kai Diekmann spent 10 months in Silicon Valley to develop new entrepreneurial ideas for digital growth on the West Coast of the USA on behalf of Axel Springer.

Kai Diekmann has been an independent member of the Board of Directors of Hürriyet since 2004, Non-Executive Director of the London Times since 2011, and a member of the Public Policy Advisory Board, UBER, San Francisco, since 2017. Since November 2017, he has also been Chairman of the Freundeskreis Yad Vashem in Deutschland e.V. (Friends of Yad Vashem in Germany).

Today, Kai Diekmann is founder and partner of the Deutsche Fondsgesellschaft (DFG) and the social media company Storymachine.

Diekmann is author and publisher of several books. He is married and has four children.

@KaiDiekmann