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The members of the International Committee of the Red Cross
01-01-2011
Brief biographies of the 15 members (as of January 2011) of the Assembly, the ICRC's supreme governing body.
Jakob Kellenberger, President
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Jakob Kellenberger was born in 1944 and holds a PhD from the University of Zurich. He entered the Swiss diplomatic service in 1974 and held various posts in the Swiss embassies in Madrid, Brussels (European Communities) and London. From 1984 to 1992 he headed the Integration Office (in charge of relations with the European Communities and the European Free Trade Association) in Berne, as Minister from 1984 and as Ambassador from 1988. From 1992 to 1999 he was State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Political Director, in which capacity he also acted as coordinator and chief negotiator for the bilateral agreements between Switzerland and the European Union (1994 to 1998). He has been president of the ICRC since 2000. Jakob Kellenberger holds a doctorate honoris causa from the University of Basel and Catania.
Mr Kellenberger is married to Elisabeth Kellenberger-Jossi. The couple have two children.
Christine Beerli, vice-president
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Christine Beerli was born in 1953. A member of a law firm in Biel, Ms Beerli began her political career on that city's municipal council, where she served from 1980 to 1983. From 1986 to 1991 she was a member of the legislative assembly of the Canton of Bern.
In 1991 she was elected to the upper house of the Swiss parliament, where she remained until 2003, chairing the foreign affairs committee (1998-99) and the committee for social security and health (2000-2001). Ms Beerli chaired the caucus of the Free Democratic Party in Switzerland's federal assembly from 1996 to 2003. She also served on committees dealing with security policy and economic and legal affairs. She retired from politics in 2003. Since 1 January 2006 she has headed Swissmedic, the Swiss supervisory authority for therapeutic products. She is a former director of the School of Engineering and Information Technology at Bern University of Applied Sciences.
Olivier Vodoz, vice-president
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Olivier Vodoz was born in 1943. He is a barrister and a member of the board of directors of the Union Bancaire Privée, a private investment bank in Geneva. He is also on the board of directors of the Swiss insurance company Helvetia Patria and Geneva's Heritage Bank & Trust. He is a senior member of the foundation for the theology faculty at the University of Geneva and is active in various other cultural and humanitarian foundations.
Mr Vodoz became a member of the ICRC in 1998. He serves on the ICRC's Audit Committee and its Recruitment Commission. He also heads the Empress Shôken Fund. Since 1 January 2006 he has been serving as ICRC vice-president, a task he shoulders in addition to his professional activities.
Mr Vodoz is a past president of the Geneva Liberal Party. From 1977 to 1989 he was a member of Geneva's cantonal Parliament and from 1989 to 1997 a member of the cantonal State Council. He has also been a member of the council supervising the practice of psychiatry and has headed the commission supervising the conduct of the Geneva police force.
Mr Vodoz is married to Martine Vodoz-Joris. They have two children.
Paolo Bernasconi
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Paolo Bernasconi was born in 1943 in Lugano, Switzerland. In 1969 he joined the public prosecutor's office in Lugano, which he headed from 1971 to 1986. Since then he has been a practising barrister in Lugano and a partner in the law firm Peter Bernasconi & Partners in Lugano. He has been a professor at the University of Zurich since 1986, at the Centro di Studi Bancari in Lugano since 1990, at Bocconi University in Milan since 1996, at the University of St Gallen since 1999 and at the University of Como since 2003. From 1987 to 1989 he was also a visiting professor at the University of Genoa.
Mr Bernasconi has served as a consultant to the UN Committee on Crime Prevention and Control (1990,1992), the Council of Europe (1982, 1995, 1999), the OECD (1996) and the European Commission (2001). He is a member of several federal consultative committees for the revision of Swiss laws and in 2001 he was vice-president of the Permanent Consultative Council of the Swiss Federal Authority against Money Laundering. He is co-editor of two criminal law reviews in Switzerland and Italy and a board member of several European associations and institutes concerned with international cooperation in the fight against money laundering and corruption. Since 2006 he has been chairman of the Arbitration Board of the Swiss Association of Asset Managers and since 1996 he has been a member of the Advisory Board of Transparency International.
Mr Bernasconi was elected to the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1986. Since 1994 he has chaired the ICRC Audit Committee, which oversees the mechanisms and processes of the internal control system in cooperation with the external auditing firm.
Daniel Thürer
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Daniel Thürer was born in 1945. He holds the chairs of International and European Law and Public and Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Zurich. He received his J.D. degree (lic. iur.) from Zurich University (1970), his LL.M. from Cambridge University (1974) and his Ph.D. (Dr. iur.) from Zurich University (1974). He was a Research Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute of Public International Law and Comparative Public Law in Heidelberg from 1976 to 1979 and a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School from 1979 to 1981. He was legal advisor to a Swiss cantonal government from 1981 to 1983 and became a professor at the University of Zurich in 1983. He received an honorary degree in political science from the University of St. Gallen in 2001. Daniel Thürer is also the Swiss Delegate to the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) of the Council of Europe. He is a member of the International Court of Arbitration, a member of the OSCE Court of Arbitration and Conciliation and an alternate member of the Executive Committee of the International Commission of Jurists. He has served as a member of the Constitutional Court of the Principality of Liechtenstein (1989-2000), an expert for the “Total Revision” of the Swiss Constitution and a member of the (internationally composed) “Independent Commission of Experts -- Switzerland and the Second World War.”
Daniel Thürer was a visiting research professor at Harvard Law School and the Stanford School of Law and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hong Kong University. He is co-founder of the "Europa Institut Zürich“ and member of the boards of editors of the "Revue de droit suisse,“ "Revue Suisse de droit international et de droit européen“ and "Archiv des Völkerrechts."
Daniel Thürer has published widely in the fields of international, European and public law. He is married and has two daughters.
André von Moos
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André von Moos was born in 1949. He studied economics in St Gallen and holds a doctorate in law. After a career as manager and CEO he decided to become an entrepreneur. Since 1997 he has created several companies in different fields of business. He also serves as an outside director on the boards of a number of companies and as a member of the Stiftungsrat FER, to which he was appointed in 2001. André von Moos published numerous articles about good governance, plus two books about good governance of family-owned businesses.
Andre von Moos has been a member of the Assembly since 1997. He was elected to the Audit Committee in 2000, and since 2003 has also been a member of the "Fondation pour le CICR."
He is married to Corina von Moos-Frey and they have three children.
Yves Sandoz
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Yves Sandoz was born in 1944 and holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Doctor of Laws from the University of Neuchâtel.
From 1968 to 1973, he carried out various assignments for the ICRC in Nigeria, Israel and the occupied territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Yemen and elsewhere. He also wrote his doctoral thesis and was in charge of editing a new edition of a commentary on the Swiss penal code.
Mr Sandoz joined the ICRC in 1975 as a member of the Legal Division and remained with the organization until 2000, serving for 18 years as Director for International Law and Policy. During this period he was also active in the academic world, giving courses in various universities and institutions of higher learning, conducting seminars and authoring numerous publications.
After leaving the ICRC, Mr Sandoz conceived the idea of setting up the University Centre for International Humanitarian Law in Geneva and served on the Centre's provisional board of directors once it came into being. Since 2002 he has given the general course on humanitarian law for the Master's programme offered by the Centre and a one-semester course on the same subject at the University of Fribourg. He also holds a three-day seminar at the College of Europe, in Bruges, and works with many other universities and institutions of higher learning. He frequently takes part in seminars and meetings of experts in the fields of general international law, international criminal law and especially international humanitarian law.
Yves Sandoz was elected to the Committee in October 2002 and sits on its Audit Committee. He is also a member of the International Institute of Human Rights, the International Institute of Humanitarian Law and many international law associations. He has published widely, mainly in the field of international humanitarian law.
Mr Sandoz is married and has three children.
Claude le Coultre
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Claude Le Coultre is an honorary professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva, former vice-dean of the faculty and chair of the Faculty Committee on Cooperation with the Countries of the South and East. She was the Geneva University Hospital delegate for humanitarian affairs from 2004 to 2007.
Claude Le Coultre has been working in the Geneva University Hospitals since 1978 and has been practising as a paediatric surgeon since 1979. She was in charge of the Paediatric Surgery Department of Geneva Children’s Hospital from 1991 to 2004.
She has been a member of the Foundation Council of Children Action since 1994, devoting part of her time there to surgery and development projects in Asian countries.
In 2004 she was elected to chair the PIAH (Interdisciplinary Programme in Humanitarian Action), a post-graduate programme offered by the University of Geneva, a position she held until 2007.
Claude Le Coultre has been a member of the ICRC since 2004 and currently serves on the Audit Committee. She has chaired the board of the ICRC Special Fund for the Disabled since January 2008.
Paola Ghillani
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Paola Ghillani was born in 1963. A pharmacist by profession, she began her career with Ciba/Novartis. After spending several years in multinational management, she became CEO of the Max Havelaar Foundation, a Fair Trade organization, in 1999. During the same period, she was appointed member of the Board of FLO (Fairtrade Labelling Organizations) International and was elected President and Chairwoman of the FLO Board from 2001 to 2004. Paola Ghillani has been a Member of the Assembly since 2005. She also serves on the boards of various organizations, including several ethical investment funds.
Paola Ghillani founded her own company, Paola Ghillani & Friends Ltd, on 1 September 2005. The company is active in corporate strategies and management consulting and in promoting and implementing sustainable development and ethics in business.
Paola Ghillani graduated with a degree in pharmacy from the University of Lausanne, and completed her business training with a master’s degree in international general management from the IMD Business School in Lausanne, where she also took the international programme for board management. Ms Ghillani was selected as Global Leader for Tomorrow (GLT) by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2000.
Christiane Augsburger
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Christiane Augsburger was born in 1943. She is a graduate of the French Red Cross nursing school in Colmar. After serving as a home-care teacher and teacher-trainer for the Geneva branch of the Swiss Red Cross, she taught at Le Bon Secours nursing school in Geneva for 14 years while sitting on numerous Swiss Red Cross commissions. From 1988 to 2006, she was director of La Source, the Swiss Red Cross nursing school in Lausanne. She is currently a member of the national ethics commission and an expert member of the health and social affairs commission of the Leenaards Foundation in Lausanne.
Bernard G.R. Daniel
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Bernard G. R. Daniel was born in 1944. After graduating in law from the University of Geneva, he continued his training at the IMD in Lausanne (Executive Development Programme and International Seminar for Board Members).
Mr Daniel joined the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1967 during the Arab-Israeli conflict known as the "Six-Day War.". From 1967 to 1972 he carried out several assignments in the Middle East (in Yemen, Iraq and Iran) and in South-East Asia (in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Viet Nam and Cambodia) and Bangladesh. He opened the first ICRC regional delegation in South-East Asia, in Malaysia.
Returning to Switzerland in 1973, Mr Daniel joined the Nestlé Group, where he served as secretary to the board of directors and secretary-gGeneral from 1987 to 2007. During that time he was also a member of the International Security Management Association (US) and took part in the proceedings of the working group of the European Round Table of Industrialists (Brussels). Mr Daniel also contributes to the deliberations of the Centre for European Policy Studies (Brussels) in the corporate governance field and is a member of the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN, London).
Deeply involved in economic, social, cultural and political life, Mr Daniel serves on several foundation councils and executive boards of public and private institutions. He is also a founding member of the "RODEO" (Rotary Demining Operation) Foundation. He became a member of the Assembly in April 2009.
Mr Daniel is married to Brenda Daniel-Croucher. They have two sons.
Rolf Soiron
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Rolf Soiron was born near Frankfurt in 1945. He holds a doctorate in history and a PMD from Harvard Business School, where he specialized in business management. In the course of his international career he has held various business management positions in such areas as human resources, financial administration, operational management and strategic planning. He has worked in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries and in medical engineering, construction and finance. He has gained extensive experience of corporate governance as the chairman of the boards of Holcim, Lonza and Nobel Biocare.
Alongside his career in the private sector, Mr Soiron has played an active role in public life as a member of the Riehen Communal Council and the Grand Council of the Canton of Basel-City. He also spent 10 years as president of the Basel University Council. He is the current president of Avenir Suisse.
He was elected to the Assembly in 2009.
Mr Soiron lives in Basel. He is married to Alicia Soiron-Lüthi and has two children and six grandchildren.
François Bugnion
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François Bugnion holds a BA and a PhD in political sciences and is an independent consultant in the fields of international humanitarian law and humanitarian action.
He joined the ICRC in 1970 and served as a delegate in Israel and the cccupied territories, Bangladesh, Turkey and Cyprus, and then as head of mission in Chad, Vietnam and Cambodia. From 2000 to 2006, he was director for International Law and Cooperation at the ICRC.
He has published more than 50 books and articles, mainly on international humanitarian law and the history of the Red Cross, including The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Protection of War Victims.
Bruno Staffelbach
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Bruno Staffelbach was born in 1957 and has been professor of Business Administration and Human Resource Management at the University of Zurich since 1992. He holds a master’s degree in economics, a doctorate in business administration, and a postdoctoral qualification in management and ethics from the University of Zurich. He has taught at the University of Fribourg and at the University of Applied Sciences in Lucerne. From 1992-2000 he was the director of the executive education programme and until 2010 he headed the Institute for Strategy and Business Economics, both at the University of Zurich.
In addition to his career in the academic community, Bruno Staffelbach has served as a commander and general staff officer at various levels in the Swiss armed forces. From 2004 to 2008 he held the rank of Brigadier-General and commanded an infantry brigade.
Mr Staffelbach sits on the boards of a number of organizations. He is vice-president of the University Council of the University of Lucerne and a former president of the Executive MBA of the University of Zurich. He was elected to the Assembly in 2010.
Bruno Staffelbach is married to Claire Rüegg Staffelbach.
Jürg Kesselring
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Mr Jürg Kesselring is Head of Department of Neurology & Neurorehabilitation, Rehabilitation Centre, Valens, Switzerland. Professor of Clinical Neurology and Neurorehabilitation, University of Bern and Center of Neuroscience, University and ETH Zürich. President of the Swiss Multiple Sclerosis Society. Former Chairman of the International Medical and Scientific Board of Multiple Sclerosis International Federation (MSIF) Chairman of the WHO Working Group on Multiple Sclerosis. Former ICRC medical delegate to Lebanon, Pakistan and Zaire.
Jürg Kesselring is married to Verena Kesselring-Fotsch. They have three adult children.
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