A member of the VfB Stuttgart supervisory board since September 2022, Tanja Gönner was elected chairwoman of the board in March 2024 before handing over the reins to Dietmar Allgaier at the end of September 2024.
After studying law at Tübingen University and completing her legal clerkship, Gönner landed her first job as a lawyer in a firm specialising in insolvency law in 1999. She worked as a politician from 2002 to 2012, serving as a member of the German Bundestag, minister for social affairs, environment, nature conservation and transport in Baden-Württemberg, and as a member of the Baden-Württemberg state parliament. An executive board member and spokesperson at GIZ GmbH between 2012 and 2022, Gönner has been the director general of the Federation of German Industries (BDI e.V.) since November 2022.
Gönner was born in Sigmaringen on 23 July 1969.