Executive board

The HafenCity Hamburg GmbH team

Implementing major urban development initiatives and creating new city districts is a mammoth task. Management requirements are high and the complex tasks range from forward-looking planning and intensive process control to bringing together a wide variety of stakeholders.

The overall responsibility for planning and implementing HafenCity, Grasbrook, Billebogen and Science City Hamburg Bahrenfeld is concentrated in HafenCity Hamburg GmbH and its subsidiaries. In this integrated urban development task, the municipal enterprise benefits from the broad expertise of its entire workforce: A dedicated team of engineers, site developers, lawyers, economists, cultural and humanities experts, social scientists, geographers and landscape architects are today working closely together to build the city of tomorrow.

The Executive Board comprises Theresa Twachtmann and Dr Andreas Kleinau (CEO). Henning Liebig, Dr Gesa Matthes, Nina Schaube and Peter Schulte form the extended management team.

Executive Board

Chief Executive Officer

Dr Andreas Kleinau

Born in Hamburg, Dr Andreas Kleinau studied business administration at the University of Hamburg and obtained a doctorate in business data processing. He began his professional career in 1993 with Quickborner Team, a company specializing in organizational and real estate consultancy. Five years later he founded macon Gesellschaft für Unternehmensberatung mbH, based in Munich.

Here Andreas Kleinau developed location strategies, building concepts and innovative work and organization solutions on behalf of national and international companies, turning the company into one of the best regarded consultancy firms in the German real estate industry. In 2015, Andreas Kleinau and his fellow partners founded the internationally active real estate advisory company combine Consulting GmbH with offices in Hamburg, Berlin, Munich and Düsseldorf, the product of a merger of macon and Quickborner Team.

At combine and his previous companies, Andreas Kleinau advised numerous well-known clients from business and the public sector with regard to their corporate real estate strategies. In an advisory role, he supported the decision-making processes for numerous major projects, including in HafenCity. These included the new corporate headquarters for Spiegel, DNVGL, Unilever and New Work (formally XING). Dr Kleinau joined the executive board of HafenCity Hamburg GmbH in fall 2020, taking over as CEO in November 2021.

Managing Executive

Theresa Twachtmann

Until joining HafenCity Hamburg GmbH, Theresa Twachtmann was Head of Finance, Controlling and Treasury for the public transport body Hamburger Hochbahn. After a degree in business administration, she began her career as a strategy and banking consultant at IBM in Switzerland.

In 2008, she became commercial director of the prestigious Lucerne Festival and also completed a master’s degree in arts administration. She moved to Hamburg in 2013, where she initially took over the commercial management of the Thalia Theater and later worked as an independent management consultant for the Elbphilharmonie, among other projects.

In addition to her many years of experience of management in the private, public and cultural sectors, Theresa Twachtmann has also been a member of several supervisory boards. Due to her involvement in a wide range of projects, some of them international, she also has a broad understanding of urban planning and the political sphere.

Extended Management Team

Strategic Innovation

Dr Gesa Matthes

Dr Gesa Matthes studied town planning and, following her doctorate at Hamburg University of Technology, worked there initially as a research associate at the Institute for Transport Planning and Logistics, before moving to the Institute for Social-Ecological Research in Frankfurt in a similar capacity.

Before joining HafenCity Hamburg GmbH, the engineering graduate was a specialist for transport issues in urban development at Hamburg’s Ministry of Transport and the Mobility Revolution (BVM).

Contract and Allocation
Management

Nina Schaube

After studying law and political science at the University of Trier, Nina Schaube initially worked as a consultant in Luxembourg. Following her second juridical state examination, she joined Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer as a lawyer before moving to the Hamburg law firm trûon.

Until joining HafenCity Hamburg GmbH, she was employed by the City of Hamburg’s real estate and land assets management body, initially as an in-house lawyer and later as head of the purchasing department.

Finance and Controlling

Peter Schulte

Peter Schulte has headed up the Finance and Controlling department at HafenCity Hamburg GmbH since 2016. Before joining the company in 2010, the naval reserve officer held various positions in the areas of finance, controlling and accounting with the Federal German Armed Forces as well as in the City of Hamburg (finance ministry).

An economics graduate (Helmut Schmidt University), in 2011 he also gained an MBA from the Nordakademie Elmshorn.

Further information

Urban development

About HafenCity

Europe’s largest inner-city urban development project as a blueprint for the new European city on the waterfront.

Organization

HafenCity Hamburg GmbH

Integrated development management is the only route to success in creating completely new urban districts.