Curriculum Vitae
Jan Bayer is an experienced media leader with a preeminent track record in business transformation and a transatlantic footprint. Since August 2025, he is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Axel Springer SE, a family-owned, transatlantic media company with over 10,000 employees and operations in more than 25 countries. As Executive Chairman US, he strategically supports Axel Springer’s U.S. business from Washington, D.C. and New York. He also represents Axel Springer on the shareholder boards of The Stepstone Group, one of the world’s leading recruiting platforms, and AVIV, a leading European real estate platform.
Until the end of July 2025, Jan served as Deputy CEO and President News Media USA of Axel Springer SE. A member of the Executive Board since 2012, Jan has decisively transformed the company’s media business both in its German home market and internationally. He thereby played a vital role in its groundbreaking evolution from a traditional German publisher into a fully digitized transatlantic media organization. Jan’s impact as part of Axel Springer’s leadership team has been defined by a consistent digitization strategy, the execution of major M&A transactions, and the orchestration of an ongoing organizational transformation process. Notably, he was instrumental in executing the strategic divestiture of Axel Springer’s regional and magazine print-focused media assets in 2014 – a landmark in the company’s evolution. In recent years, Jan has significantly strengthened Axel Springer’s transatlantic presence and U.S. expansion through high-profile acquisitions (e.g. POLITICO), structural transformation, a dedicated focus on technological innovation and the development of cross-border leadership frameworks. The U.S. business has since become Axel Springer’s strongest growth engine in journalistic operations, with approximately 2,000 employees and media brands POLITICO, BUSINESS INSIDER, MORNING BREW as well as digital research company Emarketer.
Jan’s career in the media industry spans three decades. Over the course of more than 13 years on the Executive board of Axel Springer, he headed almost all business divisions, notably the media brands, publishing businesses and selected media marketing and classifieds businesses in Germany, Switzerland, Eastern Europe and the U.S. As Managing Director since 2007, he led and controlled the business of several nationwide and regional Axel Springer media brands. Under his leadership, these brands evolved from traditional print offerings into multimedia brands that set new industry standards (including as a pioneer in the successful introduction of paid content models for media brands in Germany). Jan began his work for Axel Springer in 2006, heading the Executive Office (Newspapers) and coordinating all business activities (such as sales, distribution, printing, digitization) across news brands.
Before joining Axel Springer, Jan held managing positions at other German media companies. At Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich, where he started his career as a management trainee in 1995, he served as Publishing Director and led the Controlling and Ad Sales divisions.
Jan studied media and law in Germany and in the U.S. He lives and works in Washington, D.C. and in New York City.