Stephan Loerke

Stephan has been Managing Director of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) since November 2003. Previously, he was Deputy Managing Director and Public Affairs Manager.

During his tenure, WFA has doubled its corporate membership and has extended its network to 57 countries, significantly reinforcing the WFA’s presence in the world’s fastest emerging advertising markets.

Stephan is co-founder and a Steering Committee member of the Advertising Education Forum (AEF). The AEF is an expert source of information on the issue of advertising and children and serves to promote the use of academic information in policy-making. He is also an Executive Committee Member of the European Advertising Standards Alliance (EASA), which is the European umbrella organization for advertising self-regulatory organizations. He was elected by the World Economic Forum (WEF) to be a member of the Global Agenda Council for Media, Entertainment and Information in 2011/12.

Prior to joining WFA, Stephan worked for L’Oreal in Paris and Brussels. Product Manager of several brands in France, he was made Marketing Director of the L’Oreal Parfumerie Division in Belgium in 1992. Three years later, he was appointed Managing Director of the same division.

He has a European Baccalaureate from the European School of Brussels and has studied business economics at the Saint Gall Business School in Switzerland - after which he worked at the United Nations in New York. Stephan (53) has German and French nationalities.