Mirco Guenther is the Head of the Asia-Pacific Department at Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES). He previously served as Director of the Singapore-based FES Office for Regional Cooperation in Asia from 2019 to 2022 and led projects on geopolitics and geoeconomics, the economy of tomorrow, and the future of work throughout the Asia-Pacific region. From 2016 to 2019, he was Director of the FES Afghanistan Office in Kabul and Coordinator of the FES Asia Peace and Security Project.
Before joining FES, Guenther held various leadership positions with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) from 2009 to 2016. Seconded by the German Foreign Office, he was Deputy Head of Mission and Chargé d’affaires at the OSCE mission in Kazakhstan, Deputy Team Leader with the OSCE monitoring mission in Eastern Ukraine, and Political Affairs Officer at the OSCE mission in Tajikistan. He is a member of the civilian expert pool of the German Center for International Peace Operations (ZIF).
Guenther was a McCloy Fellow at Harvard University and Chair of the German-American Conference at Harvard. He holds an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School and an MLitt in Middle East and Central Asian Security Studies from the University of St Andrews. He also completed a BA in Political Science at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). Guenther is a member of the Toenissteiner Kreis and an Atlantik-Brücke Young Leaders alumnus.”
