Dr. Livia Cotta was born in Berlin in 1970 and studied medicine at the Free University of Berlin from 1989 through 1996. She received her doctorate from Humboldt University of Berlin and worked as a physician at the Charité Medical Clinic until she received her license to practice medicine (“Approbation”) in 1998. Alongside other work she received her Master in Business Administration in 2008 from the Technical University in Munich.
From 1998 through 2007 Livia Cotta undertook various editing and event management positions at the Georg Thieme Verlag – a Stuttgart-based publishing house that specializes in medical literature. Among other projects while working there she established a professional journal for psychotherapists, assembled Internet presentations and conferences and oversaw the re-launch of a professional journal for anesthesiologists. She then worked for two years as the head of marketing and communications at Hocoma, a Swiss medical technology company located near Zurich.
She developed proficiency in managing an internationally active non-profit organization while working with the German Bone Marrow Donor Database (DKMS), where she worked as medical director beginning in 2009 and was also responsible for the human resources, administration and IT departments.
As a journalist she has published on themes such as “medicine in crisis areas” and she received the 2003 “Karl Theodor Vogel Preis für Fachpublizistik” for her publication “Neurologische Reha – Training für die grauen Zellen”. Under her direction, the journal physiopraxis was named “Professional Journal of the Year” in 2005.
Dr. Livia Cotta came to the Heinrich Böll Stiftung in the spring of 2013 to apply her managerial experience in global and intercultural work to an organization that is engaged in building a better society within and beyond the field of health care and that emphasizes values such as ecology, solidarity and gender democracy. Her key interests include the promotion of democratic decision-making and socio-political involvement via national and international educational projects.
Livia Cotta is CEO of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung since 2013.