Speakers

Prof. Dr. Stefan Bratzel
Executive Director and Founder
Center of Automotive Management (CAM)

Prof. Dr. Stefan Bratzel is the founder and director of the independent research institute Center of Automotive Management (CAM) at the University of Applied Sciences for Management in Bergisch Gladbach.

After studying political science at Freie Universität Berlin and subsequently earning his doctorate, Bratzel became active in and around the automotive industry. Born in 1967, he held various positions, including Product Manager at smart, a Daimler subsidiary; Program Manager at Group3G, a Telefónica subsidiary; and Head of Business Development Automotive at the medium-sized software company PTV.

Since April 2004, Stefan Bratzel has worked at the University of Applied Sciences for Management in Bergisch Gladbach, near Cologne, as a lecturer and programme director for Automotive Management. He also works in research and consulting as Director of the local automotive institute CAM.

Stefan Bratzel’s research focuses on the factors determining the success and survival of automotive manufacturers and suppliers, as well as on the future of mobility. Drawing on empirical studies, he examines innovation trends in the automotive industry and the business models of major IT corporations, using these findings to develop propositions about the future of (auto)mobility. As a recognised industry expert, he is one of Germany’s most frequently quoted automotive economists in the press, on radio and on television.

Thorben Deckers
Senior Manager Outbound Logistics
Mercedes-Benz AG

Mark Hindley
President
ECG

With a career in the automotive industry spanning five decades, Mark has extensive experience working for OEM, consultancy and logistics service providers. He has held several senior commercial management roles in sales and marketing. He is currently Commercial Director, OEM at BCA Group, covering the full breadth of end-to-end services, from new vehicles to used-vehicle remarketing.

Mark has been a member of the ECG Board since 2018, served as Vice-President for two years and was elected President in 2026.

Christopher Ludwig
Chief Content Officer
Automotive Logistics and Ultima Media

Christopher Ludwig is chief content officer at UK-based Ultima Media, where he is responsible for editorial and content strategy, business intelligence and events across its automotive business media portfolio, including Automotive Logistics and its dedicated focus on the finished vehicle logistics industry. He also works across a wider group of automotive media and technology titles at Ultima Media and the Automotive and Industry Cluster within Süddeutscher Verlag, the German media group to which Ultima Media belong. He is part of the company’s senior management team.

Ludwig has covered automotive logistics and supply chain management trends, topics and companies since 2006, profiling industry leaders, building conference and media programmes and carrying out research on global automotive logistics and finished vehicle logistics. Prior to Ultima Media, he worked across a range of publishing and editorial titles.

He has a Master of Science in Media and Communication from the London School of Economics.

Lars Sudmann
Leadership Advisor
Sudmann & Company

Lars Sudmann is a keynote speaker and board advisor with extensive hands-on background in leadership, growth transformation and navigating uncertainty, for instance as a former executive of Procter & Gamble. Lars is currently a lecturer on leadership and strategy at the RWTH Aachen University of Technology and has worked with top teams from companies such as Mercedes, DHL, and Siemens, to name a few. Additionally, he is the transformation council director at the global think tank “The Conference Board”. He has been featured in BBC Capital, Forbes, Fortune, Inc, The Economist Network, Fast Company, the Chicago Tribune and many more. His TEDx talks are top-ranked with more than two million views and he is the author of the transformative leadership book “Innovation that Sticks.”