Rainer Westermann

Rainer Westermann is the Chairman of the Life Sciences Acceleration Alliance e.V., Munich, a European non-profit coalition dedicated to educating and conveying knowledge about venture capital financing in the life sciences sector in Europe. LSAA aims to improve the entrepreneurial environment for young and innovative companies in life sciences in Europe and to create a reliable legal framework for corresponding investments and venture capitalists.

Rainer is a Board Member and former President of the Crisis Protection Network, Zurich, an international network of reputation management advisors. He serves on the Advisory Board of the TUM Institute for LifeLong Learning, Munich, as well as teaching as a lecturer at the TUM School of Management.

As Principal of Westermann Advisors, Rainer advises and supports clients in situations with a high reputation risk, focusing on strategic communications, reputation management and crisis as well as litigation response.

During his career, he was advisor to senior management for a broad range of blue-chip companies in Germany, Canada and the USA. He managed professional services firms and, as a corporate officer, was responsible for building, improving and protecting corporate reputation.

As Corporate Vice President of Infineon Technologies, a German DAX 30 corporation, he was responsibile for the corporate brand, marketing communications, government relations as well as external and internal communications. He was named CEO Germany for FleishmanHillard and later Burson-Marsteller, two of the leading international communications consultancies.

Rainer spent six years in North America, where he was a Member of the Management Board of LHS Group, an Atlanta based NASDAQ and Neuer Markt listed software company. He represented the company as corporate spokesperson towards the global investment community and the media. In Toronto, he built a successful corporate communications and investor relations practice for FleishmanHillard Canada. He joined the consultancy originally in Frankfurt, when he founded Fleishman-Hillard Germany, a joint venture formed from his own marketing communications agency. During his career, Rainer supported a number of clients in the health care sector and worked in-house for the medical products division of DuPont.