Christian was born and grew up in Munich, Germany, until leaving for Business school in the US and post-graduation starting his career at German Media company Bertelsmann in New York City. He made the company’s first investments in Silicon Valley, beginning his long relationship with entrepreneurship. Christian has since founded several startups, been part of the leadership team taking Imax Corp. public and served as Head of Digital for Universal Music Group East Coast. He is currently COO, Americas for Start2 Group which has supported over 1200 startups and has run the German Accelerator program for 13 years, Europe's largest Scale-Up program, minting a number of unicorns in the process. Christian has always made it a priority to give back to the next generation of founders and the community. In his free time, he is a mentor at Endeavor (https://endeavor.org/), a leading community for high impact entrepreneurs and BUILD (https://build.org/nyc/), an entrepreneurship program for high school students from under-resourced communities. Christian holds a Diploma in Economics from LMU in Munich and an MBA from Columbia Business School. In Munich he received a merit scholarship for especially gifted students granted by the Bavarian State government and received a special appreciation grade for his thesis on compatibility of economic growth and climate protection which had not been awarded in several years. He was also a winner of the Procter & Gamble Fellowship at Columbia Business School, a full tuition scholarship given on merit to one international student entering each year, as well as a member of the Dean’s Honor List.