The people

Who we are

A small team with great conviction — and many hands that pitch in anew each year.

Late evening. Someone writes to an embassy about a child's visa. Someone updates a spreadsheet with 200 names. A phone rings in Switzerland—the congress center has a question.

No office. No employees. No budget. Four people using evenings and weekends. We try things, see what works, adjust. So far: a forum in Davos, a Nobel Prize nomination, connections being made.

In 2026, young people join the team. Responsibility shifts now, not later.

If you think this should grow, get in touch.

We are small, ebbing and flowing like the questions we explore.

We gather when needed, disperse when the work is done. We show up when wonder calls, when help is needed.

Together, we form a growing network of humans.

How do you organize wonder with just a few hands? How do you fund questions that don't promise immediate answers?

We're learning as we go—finding new ways to support transformation that can't be measured in traditional metrics.

Forum team & crew

Berni Founder · Core team

Berni Hanel

As a father, he lives what he believes—raising his children on a farm in the Black Forest where art and life are inseparable.
As a researcher, he discovers the power of wonder.
As an entrepreneur, he builds companies that put children at the center.
As a philosopher, he argues that our future depends on reconnecting with the childlike consciousness we've forgotten.
Werner Organisation · Core team

Werner Pommerenke

As a father, he fills his children's lives with music and stories—not as entertainment, but as language for what matters.
As a host, he creates places where encounters become possible—in Svedlanda near Bullerbü, people meet who would never sit at the same table elsewhere.
As a connector, he brings together what belongs together—people, music, ideas, and the seriousness with which he takes play.
Franz Visuals · Core team

Franz Walter

As a father, he shares the wilderness with his children—teaching them to see stories in landscapes before they learn to capture them.
As a photographer and filmmaker, he travels the world in search of narratives that can only be told through images.
As a designer, he has worked on one question for nearly 20 years: How do we see what isn't there yet? The World Child Forum is his answer to the gap between vision and reality.
Isa Partnerships & Inclusion

Isa Knudson

As an organizer, she has put together events where para-athletes compete on the world's biggest stages.
As an economist, she knows that inclusion is not a financial burden, but a benefit.
As a networker, she builds partnerships across borders so that no barriers remain. She firmly believes that participation is a human right. And the WCF will prove it!
Isabelle

Isabelle Riedemann

As a physician, she practices anthroposophic medicine and creative process work, accompanying people toward clarity and healing.
As a mother of two small children, she carries the question of what conditions a child needs to grow up in connection and dignity.
As a practitioner of the Tamalpa Life/Art Process®, she works with body and image where words run out.
As a presence at the Forum, she joins because peace, when it is lived, becomes visible and she wants to help make it so.
Magdalena

Magdalena Ries

As a peace activist, she builds bridges between nations and communities.
As a youth advocate, she empowers the next generation to change the world.
As a political analyst, she weaves together old wisdom and new perspectives.
Yeonjae

Yeonjae Lee

As a designer, she shapes playscapes where fairness, kindness, and inclusion are built into the ground itself, not added later as good intentions.
As a founder, she carries forward the philosophy of Gunter Beltzig, transforming his legacy into an enduring institution that extends beyond any individual career.
As an ambassador, she connects Korea to Davos, and shows that the World Child Forum belongs to no single continent.
As a dreamer, she insists that warmth and love are not soft additions to design, but its hardest discipline.
Julia
Ammelie
Toni
Glasha
Jim
Sina
Christian
Jonah
Tabea

Partners

vow to the new
Edelman
Deutscher Kinderverein
IFSAR St. Gallen
samova

Read more about our teams from WCF2023 and WCF2024 (soon).