People in September 2021

T-Systems appoints new Gaia-X Chairman

Maximilian Ahrens, Chief Technology Officer of T-Systems, has been elected Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Gaia-X initiative. Deutsche Telekom, with its IT services unit T-Systems, is one of the 22 founding members of the project.

"We at Deutsche Telekom are proud to be part of Gaia-X. In close cooperation with our partners, we want to create a European data
Build an ecosystem to ensure European data sovereignty"said Maximilian Ahrens and added: "The new Board of Directors will play a key role in shaping the further development of Gaia-X services and the structure of the organization."

The member companies took part in an electronic vote in which a total of 26 Board members were elected from a list of 64 candidates. The term of office is two years. Maximilian Ahrens succeeds Hubert Tardieu, who led the founding process of the Gaia-X organization.

The Board of Directors decides on important matters of the Gaia-X Association, while CEO Francesco Bonfiglio and his management team run the day-to-day business of the pan-European initiative. Gaia-X commits its members to creating common standards and building an open-source, sovereign digital infrastructure for Europe. It was announced by the German and French Ministries of Economic Affairs in October 2019 and the Association for Data and Cloud (AISBL) was officially founded in January 2021.