Dr Christof Eichert, born in 1953, studied law and political science in Heidelberg, Erlangen and Freiburg and completed his doctorate on the subject of "Homelessness and police intervention".

From 1981 to 1995, he worked in the state administration of Baden-Württemberg and Saxony, was non-party mayor in Isny im Allgäu and alderman of the city of Reutlingen for the areas of administration, social affairs, schools, culture and sport, as well as Lord Mayor of the city of Ludwigsburg from 1995 to 2003.

As a member of the Executive Board at the Bertelsmann Foundation in Gütersloh and subsequently at the non-profit Hertie Foundation in Frankfurt, he was responsible for the development and implementation of foundation projects in the areas of education, integration and social policy as well as the dialogue between science and practice at both foundations from 2003 to 2007.

From 2007 to 2010, he was Ministerial Director and Head of Department at the Ministry for Generations, Family, Women and Integration of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, where he was responsible for social and family policy, intergenerational cohesion and integration policy.

He was then Managing Director of the Herbert Quandt Foundation in Bad Homburg until 2016. His particular interests there were issues of coexistence in our society, intercultural and interreligious projects and civic engagement, especially in rural areas.

In the context of these tasks, he was concerned with questions about the future of a society characterised by diversity and interreligious dialogue. He was also interested in the future of public administration, the development of governance structures for cooperation between the public sector, civil society, business and science, as well as questions of effective project management.

Christof Eichert was President of the German Library Association from 1996 to 2003 and was a member of the Advisory Board of the Association of German Foundations from 2011 to 2016. He has been a Senior Expert at Strategiemanufaktur Karlsruhe since 2017. In summer 2016, Christof Eichert was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Schader Foundation. From 2017 until the end of 2021, he was a part-time member of the board of the Schader Foundation in Darmstadt and works as an independent strategy consultant.

He was also made a Knight of the Legion of Honour of the French Republic in 2000 and received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2003.