Hinrich Mercker

Hinrich Mercker is director of the Development Policy Forum (Dialogue, Event Design and Event Management) in Berlin, which is part of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). He also works as a certified management coach in cooperation with coachhouse®. Since 2008 he is a fellow and research affiliate at the MIT Community Innovators Lab (CoLab). Hinrich participated in 2006/2007 in the programme Emerging Leaders Innovate Across Sectors (ELIAS), which has been initiated by the MIT/Cambridge. Since 2006 he is designing and implementing training programmes on Leadership, Change Management and Capacity Development applying principles of Theory U. 2005 and 2006 he advised the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank on the evaluation "Using Training to Build Capacity for Development". Between 1997 and 2002, Hinrich lectured at the Otto-Suhr-Institute for Political Science, part of Berlin’s Free University as well as at the University of Potsdam’s Department of Economics and Social Sciences. Prior to that, Hinrich worked for the German Foundation for International Development (DSE), where he headed the Public Administration Promotion Centre. His focus at DSE included environmental administration, local government, diplomatic services and schools of administration. He developed and conducted advanced training and dialogue programmes for executives from Asia, Africa and Central Asia, including a multi-year program with the Vietnamese Environmental Ministry in Hanoi. In 1988 Hinrich earned a university degree in Protestant Theology from Georg-August-University in Göttingen (Germany), and he also studied at Serampore College in West Bengal (India). In 1990 Hinrich completed a postgraduate training program at the German Development Institute (DIE).