Marie-Theres Thiell

Marie-Theres Thiell combines a wide range of professional experiences in the energy sector (at RWE and innogy). Her successful career spans three decades, moving from corporate M&A and portfolio management roles through country CFO and CEO roles, culminating in regional P&L responsibilities for distribution assets across 6 Central European countries. In addition to these leadership responsibilities, she has made a name for herself as a mentor for up-and-coming younger leaders, and she has been the first woman in most of the roles that she has held. She is also the creator of a strong female leader network in the energy industry in Germany and Central Europe .

Marie-Theres brings a lot of experience and insight to her work in mentoring, mostly from having had to master a broad range of challenges in her professional career to date. These include leading significant transformation programs as well as digital transformation projects. She has had more than her fair share of successfully dealing with a wide range of stakeholders, ranging from friendly to outright difficult (the latter mostly in the political realm in Central Europe) in a highy regulated and politicized industry. Marie-Theres is an avid networker and masters the art of getting people into inspiring conversation. A specific focus has always been to foster careers of female leaders. All these insights are readily available to her clients, and she is easily able to create conversations full of energy.

A lawyer by training, Marie-Theres has spent three decades in the energy industry (RWE, later Innogy). She joined RWE in their corporate center looking after M&A projects and corporate portfolio management. From there she moved into the CFO role at RWE Hungary (2005), and in addition to the “classical” CFO responsibilities, her remit included IT, customer service and supply chain management. In 2010, she was promoted to CEO of RWE Hungary (with revenues of € 1.5 bn and some 5.000 employees). From 2011 until 2016, she was also a member of the Board of RWE East, the management company for the activities of RWE in the CEE region. In addition to her regional responsibilities for Hungary and Romania she was responsible for network & grid coordination, HR, IT, health, safety and diversity. Beside her CEO function in Hungary, she was appointed Senior Vice President in the executive committee for Grid & Infrastructure of innogy in April 2016. She held both positions until April 2020. Currently she is member of various supervisory boards and Vice President of the German-Hungarian Chamber of Commerce, where she drives the initiative Digital Network and supports the economic relations between Hungary and Germany.

Marie-Theres has graduated in law from the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (holding a PhD in law). She is a true family person and dedicated aunt to her nieces and nephews. She lives in Münster and keeps a very strong connection to Hungary.