WHO WE ARE
Family
Sabine Plattner
Sabine Plattner grew up in Freiburg in post-war Germany where she spent many hours playing in the nearby forests. It was then that she developed a deep love for nature and the forests. Growing up with three elder brothers, Sabine learned early on in life that if you want to be heard you had to make yourself heard. Not being allowed to study law in the 1960s, Sabine chose to pursue her second love: education. Thus, she became a teacher.
After educating many children as a teacher and, most importantly, seeing to it that her two daughters are well equipped and grounded in this world, she made it her life ambition to ensure a balanced coexistence between man and nature, specifically through education and by contributing to saving rainforests in Africa.
Hence, in 2008 Sabine Plattner founded the Sabine Plattner African Charities focusing on child welfare, early childhood development, curriculum development as well as primatology and related research.
In addition to her charitable work, Sabine made it her goal to protect the rainforests in the Congo Basin, specifically the Odzala Kokoua Park in the Republic of Congo. More recently she extended her work to the Dzanga Sangha Reserve in the Central African Republic. She realized that sustainable development work in these remote and scarcely beautiful places in the world is only possible if you engage the local communities by providing them financial security and a purpose by giving them work. Thus, even though she had – and still has – no ambition in tourism, she founded the Congo Conservation Company with the sole aim to support socio-economic development in these regions and to focus the world’s attention on the value of these ecosystems through eco-tourism. Through this private company she is bringing local and international tourist traffic to Odzala in the Congo Basin and Dzanga-Sangha in Central African Republic. These private efforts combined with the Hasso Plattner Foundation’s multimillion-euro commitment to Odzala-Kokoua for community health and education initiatives and a gorilla habituation program ensure a balanced coexistence between man and nature, specifically through education and by contributing to saving rainforests in Africa.
Recently she has also taken hands as an investor of the WaterBear Network, focusing on international conservation awareness through the media.
Sabine is a regular keynote speaker on the topics of early childhood conservation in Africa and initiated an educational development program, EduConservation, with the aim to find ways to integrate conservation content into the curricula of schools in Africa.
Sabine is also the chairperson of the Leadership for Conservation (LCA) with its footprint in more than 20 African countries. The LCA focuses on the protection of selected ecosystems as well as influencing the youth of Africa through traditional and digital media regarding the world climate crisis.
In 2019, Sabine Platter received the Bundesverdienstkreuz from the President of Germany and the Medal de Chevalleur from the State President of the Republic of Congo in acknowledgment of her contribution to conservation in the Congo Basin.
Dr. Kristina Plattner
Kristina is a permanent member of the Foundation Council of the Hasso Plattner Foundation, as well as being on the advisory boards of many of the foundation’s facilities. She focuses her efforts on projects related to Africa and on the topics of education, environmental protection, and nature conservation.
Her interest in the natural sciences has played a key role in her academic choices: In 2002, she received her Bachelor of Science in Zoology and Biochemistry from the University of Cape Town, as well as her honors degree, a Bachelor of Science in Medicine. In 2011, she completed her PhD in the field of Exercise Physiology, Human Biology, and Neuroscience. As part of her academic work, she has published various articles on sports medicine and neurology in scientific journals and portals – for instance in the Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology (2011), the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports (2012), and in Science Direct (2014).
Kristina has lived in South Africa since 1998. Due to her deep connection to the African continent, she has been a driving and decisive force behind the foundation’s philanthropic projects in Africa since the early 2000s. She is particularly committed to sustainability, future-related issues, and social responsibility. In this, she considers education – the essential motor of development – to be key.
Accordingly, one of the projects closest to her heart is the d-school in Cape Town, which opened in March 2017 – the first HPI School of Design Thinking on the African continent. Kristina is very closely involved with the school’s strategic management. Sister organizations in Stanford and at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam served as models for the school. She is enthusiastic about its pragmatic, user-oriented approach: The focus of product development is less on extraordinary design and more on a precise understanding of what the customer wants and needs.
Her passion for Africa and aspiration to preserve African nature and culture for future generations are traits that Kristina shares with her mother, Sabine. To raise awareness for sustainability, she is also involved in her mother’s extensive environmental protection and education projects within the scope of SPAC. This includes, for example, concepts for the increased integration of Afrocentric content into school curricula. As a biologist, nature conservation research projects, such as in the Republic of the Congo, are particularly close to her heart. She is, for example, committed to making communities aware of the value of their resources and working with them to develop prospects for sustainable income that comes from nature conservation rather than rainforest deforestation. Beyond this, an environmentally conscious tourism project is in the pipeline for Odzala-Kokoua National Park, which will offer visitors the extraordinary opportunity to experience two of the great apes – gorillas and chimpanzees – in a single nature reserve.
Another focus of interest for Kristina is Data4Life. Data4Life’s goal is to create digital solutions to improve global health.
In Kristina’s experience, the essential prerequisite for getting things moving is to build trust-based relationships: “To convince many people of a good idea, it is necessary to first win over the individual.”
Stefanie Plattner
Stefanie Plattner is a trained actor and worked for several years in theater and film productions. She is a film director and producer, and the Managing Director of Storming Donkey Productions, a company she founded in 2012. Storming Donkey Productions developed the feature film Hördur, directed by Ekrem Ergün, which won the Best Children’s Film at the Berlinale in 2015 and the German Critics Film Award in 2016. Several other feature and documentary films by Storming Donkey Productions have been screened at international festivals such as the Berlinale, the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival and the SXSW Film Festival in Austin.
Stefanie founded the non-profit organization TALES, a multimedia storytelling initiative that seeks to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation for the world’s many diverse cultures and their associated mythologies, and thus contribute to the preservation of our environment. The first instalment in this series, the book “Congo Tales” (Random House/ Prestel, 15 November 2018) was featured on the front pages of major newspapers, such as the New York Times. The second entry, the short film “The Little Fish and the Crocodile,” was screened at various film festivals and won the main prize at the 2018 Chicago Film Festival. With TALES, Stefanie is currently producing the World of Us, a metaverse that combines cultural exchange, interaction, and inclusivity through an immersive, digital platform that connects young users from around the world.
Stefanie is a permanent member of the Foundation Council of the Hasso Plattner Foundation. She was involved in the conception of the new exhibition space DAS MINSK Kunsthaus in Potsdam and continues to be involved in the conception and the program of the museum, which shows contemporary and GDR works. In addition, Stefanie is the co-chair of the Advisory Board of WPI, a non-profit organization dedicated to the digitization of catalogs raisonnés and modernization of archival research in art.
