Dr. Gibfried Schenk, born 1954, studied chemistry and agricultural sciences at the Universities of Voronezh and Kiev (Dipl.-Agr.-Ing.), history (M.A.) and cultural geography (B.A.) at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg (B.A.). Doctoral thesis on the aspects of crop selection at the Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Berlin, habilitation about detection methods and efficiency of disease resistance in crops at the Martin-LutherUniversity Halle-Wittenberg.
From 1983 to 1991 he was head of the Department for Plant Virology at the Institute for Potato Research, Gross Lüsewitz.
Since 1991 Gibfried Schenk worked for BASF SE, Ludwigshafen. From 1992 to 1998 he built up and managed the distribution of plant protection products in Ukraine and Belarus in Kiev; parallel to this 1997 he took over the leadership of the Representation of BASF in Ukraine. 1998-2001 he developed and oversaw the system of Customer Relation Management and marketing for Distribution of plant protection products in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. 2001 on he was in charge of the Business management for Agricultural products in middle and south eastern Europe, 2004-2007 from Prague.
From 2008 to 2013 Dr. Schenk was appointed as Managing director of the Association for Promotion of Sustainable Agriculture (FNL e.V.) in Bonn and Berlin and gave substantial impulses for the positioning of the association as a platform for interdisciplinary communication. As the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the European Initiative for Sustainable Development in Agriculture e.V. (EISA e.V., Berlin) he supported cross-border networking of activities in agricultural sector communication.
Since 2013 Dr. Schenk works as freelance business consultant. He supports several initiatives in the field of agricultural communication pro bono.
Main focus on: economy, politics and eastern European societies, marketing, distribution, association strategy, coaching, public relations.
German native tongue, English business fluent , Russian on native level, Ukrainian fluent.