Director Sustainability, Melitta Group (Minden, Germany), since July 2019. Based in Germany. LinkedIn self-description: “Director Sustainability Melitta Group | Economic Resilience & Viability | Biodiversity & Nature Capital | Regulatory Compliance & Efficiency”.
Profiled from his own LinkedIn profile export (2026-08-14) — see Sources. ⟨Note: a LinkedIn profile is self-authored. Everything below is his own account of his career; roles and dates are unverified against a second source.⟩
Imported into the wiki on 2026-08-14 at Martin Pompéry’s request, together with Michael Opitz and Tell Münzing.
Status ⟨2026-08-17⟩
- Role, resolved 2026-08-14: he approached Opitz and is the origin of the current consortium constellation for GIZ Tender 10036847. He becomes a freelance consultant from September 2026 and wants to participate. Currently the fallback Team Leader (scenario B) or a member of the short-term expert pool — see consortium constellation.
- The assessment of his profile against the Team Leader ToR profile is held in the tender context: consortium constellation → Team Leader against the ToR profile.
Career
| Period | Role | Organization |
|---|---|---|
| 07/2019 – present | Director Sustainability | Melitta Group, Minden |
| 2012 – 2019 | Head of Corporate Responsibility | Tchibo, Hamburg |
| 2006 – 2012 | Senior Manager Corporate Responsibility | Tchibo |
| 2002 – 2006 | HR Personal Trainer & Coach | Tchibo |
17 years at Tchibo in total, 2002–2019.
Melitta Group (2019 – present)
Implementing a group-wide, sustainability-integrated strategy against strategic, legal and stakeholder requirements, with the stated goal of continuously improving business viability and resilience. Specifics from the profile:
- Developing business-unit and product-portfolio strategies under complex regulatory, strategic and stakeholder requirements.
- The Group’s national and international positioning in the political, social and economic landscape.
- Direct reporting line to chief corporate management — i.e. the sustainability function is anchored at group-management level, not buried in a staff unit.
- International Bankers Forum e.V. — Head of the chapter “Mittelstand & Transformation”.
- Board member of several associations, e.g. BAUM e.V. (⟨Background: Bundesdeutscher Arbeitskreis für Umweltbewusstes Management — the largest German-speaking business network for sustainable management; not spelled out in the profile.⟩)
Tchibo (2002 – 2019)
- Head of Corporate Responsibility (2012–2019): integration of sustainability assets into the core business, plus leadership of global public affairs; developed and refined the business strategy “100% sustainable business operations”. Represented the company towards policymakers, NGOs and the business community, and designed/led international dialogue formats on strategic topics.
- Senior Manager CR (2006–2012): Environment, Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Governance; built the operational management structures, technical frameworks and KPI systems that the group-wide sustainability strategy rested on; professionalized CR reporting and established compliance standards within the supply chains.
- HR Trainer & Coach (2002–2006): workshops and seminar series on leadership, project/conflict/time management, negotiation, strategic communication, presentation, facilitation.
Self-stated competencies
- Developing and implementing sustainability-integrated corporate and business-unit strategies to raise future viability and resilience.
- Translating legal and business requirements into strategies, processes, structures and supply chains.
- Building organization-wide and cross-organizational alliances and management systems for strategy implementation.
- Leadership and talent development (16+ years), and delivering solutions “despite high complexity and conflicting stakeholder interests”.
Top skills as listed: Business Resilience, Sustainability Strategy, Biodiversity & Nature Capital.
Languages: German (native), English (full professional), Spanish (elementary).
Education
- Leuphana Universität Lüneburg — M.A. Angewandte Kulturwissenschaften (Umweltwissenschaften).
Publications & awards (as listed)
Publications (titles only in the profile):
- Partnerschaften & Verbandsarbeit
- Omnibusverfahren: Weniger ist mehr? Ein Zwischenruf aus der Nachhaltigkeitspraxis — ⟨Background: “Omnibusverfahren” refers to the EU Omnibus package simplifying/deferring CSRD and CSDDD reporting duties; a practitioner’s intervention in that debate.⟩
- Melitta Gruppe: Unser Weg im Biodiversitätsmanagement
- Selbstbewusst und positiv: Melitta bleibt auf Nachhaltigkeitskurs
Awards (attributed to his work/employers, not itemized by year in the profile): CSR-Preis der Bundesregierung; Special Prize for Innovation / Biodiversity Competition Germany; Deutscher Nachhaltigkeitspreis 2016; Preis für Unternehmensethik; Nachhaltigkeitspreis Logistik.
Relevance to SINE
⟨Inference: the following connections are drawn from the profile against existing wiki pages; none of them are claims he has made about SINE.⟩
- Corporate demand side for supply-chain data. His two employers are coffee and consumer-goods groups whose sustainability claims depend on primary data from agricultural supply chains — the exact gap named in ESG reporting in the financial sector and the problem Pathfinder Network and Digital Product Passport address. He has personally built KPI systems and supply-chain compliance standards, i.e. he has operated the data layer, not only the narrative.
- Agricultural / deforestation value chains. Coffee is a core EUDR commodity, which puts him thematically adjacent to SAFE project (GIZ) and Tender 10036847 — from the buyer’s side of the chain rather than the producer’s.
- Regulatory-simplification debate. His Omnibus publication puts him on record in the CSRD/CSDDD rollback debate, which directly shapes how much corporate pull exists for standardized sustainability data.
- Association leverage. BAUM e.V. board seat and the International Bankers Forum chapter “Mittelstand & Transformation” are two multiplier channels into German Mittelstand and finance — relevant to the membership/alliance funding models profiled under market & competitors (e.g. OpenSSF tiered membership).
- Biodiversity & natural capital is his own emphasis. ⟨Updated 2026-09-24: this is no longer a white space. The wiki now carries nature-related reporting frameworks (KM-GBF, SEEA EA, TNFD, NPI, NGFS), essential variables and GEO BON, off Kim et al. (2026). The guess above — that nature-related disclosure has the same primary-data problem as carbon — survives on the corporate side and is contradicted on the state side, where the reporting entities are governments with nothing to withhold. He sits on the corporate side, which is the side where the problem shape is still unverified. That makes him the most direct route the wiki currently has to testing it.⟩
Fit against the Team Leader profile ⟨added 2026-08-17⟩
Two of four reservations fall away (degree, leadership years), but regional and development-cooperation experience remain unevidenced — the two heavier ToR criteria. Full comparison: consortium constellation → Team Leader against the ToR profile.
Open questions
- The question that would change his rank: in which ICP, coffee&climate or Tchibo origin-country projects was he formally named between 2006 and 2019, in what role, in which countries, in which years?
- ⟨Note: a contradiction on record — the HNEE lecturer portrait of 2019 dates the move to Melitta to May 2019, his own profile to July 2019. For a CV in GIZ format the self-declaration governs.⟩
Sources
sources/people/2026-08-14-linkedin-stefan-dierks.pdf— LinkedIn profile export, provided by Martin Pompéry, 2026-08-14. Markdown twin:sources/people/2026-08-14-linkedin-stefan-dierks/2026-08-14-linkedin-stefan-dierks.md.
See also
- Michael Opitz, Tell Münzing — imported from the same batch
- SINE Foundation