Core area: Management

„For me, Africa is more than an enormous continent – whoever engages with Africa comes back again and again. The sand and stone of the Sahara, the torrid sun in treeless savannas and the lush sultriness of tropical forests. All of this, and also the profound energy for life possessed by the people of this diverse, immeasureably wide continent, is full of strength and hope.“

For over two decades Andreas Schriber (50) has been travelling in Africa regularly as a scientific journalist, documentary film producer, and since 2003, as operative leader of the Biovision Foundation. He belongs to the founder generation of Biovision: Together with Hans R. Herren, Jürg Weber und Mathis Zimmermann he created Biovision in 1998. „The fundamental basis of Biovision was and is the accessibility of innovative, cost-effective, environmentally friendly ideas and methods generated by researchers like Hans Rudolf Herren to people in the South, so that they themselves can improve their living conditions.“

In the 1990s Schriber realised many documentary films and TV reports on ecology and development in various countries in Africa, most recently a film on new methods of pest and disease control. He was employed for 10 years as Science Editor for Swiss Naional Public TV Station (MTW magazine and nano - 3sat). As an independent author and producer he drafted and realised various films for BUWAL, ZDF, ARTE, CNN und TV Asahi (Japan). Nowadays he still produces scientific articles freelance for Swiss television and 3sat.

Issues of environment and development have occupied the publicist and fed. dipl. business economist (MBA) before: Over seven years he led the communications of WWF Switzerland. He was commissioned in this time by WWF and DEZA to launch an environmental newspaper in Madagascar. He was also responsible for the conception and management of journalist training on-site. Later he administrated various communications mandates as an expert on ecology and sustainable development.

Andreas Schriber studied journalism at the School for Applied Linguistics (SAL) after he completed with BMS-Certificate, a vocational apprenticeship as a typesetter at the Zürich University for Art and Design. In 1999 he was awarded a 12 month fellowship for professional science journalists mid-career program at MIT, Massachusetts. Schriber embarked on his most recent training in 2005 at the Swiss Northwest College for Higher Education, where he achieved his MAS-degree in Business Management and his MBA for Non-profit Organisations.

This very busy man finds respite from work in nature – whether hiking occasionally in the mountains with old friends or taking part in adventure treks with his wife and thirteen-year-old son. Practising martial arts and Zen helps the CEO maintain his composure in daily life. Andreas Schriber has practised Aikido for over 20 years and has achieved the 4th DAN. He serves as an Aikido instructor in Aikido-Dojo Zürich, an institution which he co-founded in 2003. For him there are definite connections between development work and Aikido: „My japanese Sensei taught me that patience, endurance and care are the challenges to master in learning a martial art – but also in working life.“

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