Petra Kohnen

CEO, Euronet

Petra Kohnen has a small confession to make:  She is pretty much fallen in love with the vision of improving Europeans communication and further developing the much debated European "public sphere".

She is convinced that the European Radio Network - an amalgamation of international, national, regional and local European broadcasters - gives reporting in Europe a whole new dimension. Euranet provides information about events in Europe no longer just from a national perspective but from a transnational one. In addition to the current national media co-existence, Euranet establishes an extra value as a pan-European co-operation. This cross-border initiative is not only innovative, but also unique. It is potentially the key to solving European communication problems.

She likes working in a multi-cultural and multi-lingual environment. And when she is not working, well, she enjoys pretty much the same! As head of European Desk and responsible for EU-projects in Deutsche Welle she was responsible for the co-production with European public service broadcasting corporations. This meant not only being responsible for overall co-ordination, administration and management of multi-lingual projects  but also researching, writing and voicing programmes, reports and features about European topics.

Petra Kohnen joined Deutsche Welle in 1989. She started as editor and reporter in the department for politics and current affairs in the German Service in Cologne. 1992 Deutsche Welle sent her to DW's Parliamentary Studio in Bonn, as correspondent for all radio programmes and in 1999 to DW's Parliamentary Studio in Berlin. Her main field of reporting was foreign and defence policy.

After completing her university studies (English, language and literature, Philosophy, and Communications) at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn, she worked as assistant in the department of media communication at the University of Trier. During that time she was engaged in establishing private radio stations in Rhineland-Palatinate and was responsible for RPR-Studio Trier.