Dirk Hoke is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Airbus Defence and Space as of 1 April 2016. He started on 1 January as Deputy CEO. He is a member of the Airbus Group Executive Committee. Dirk Hoke joined Airbus Group from Siemens, where he had been CEO of the Large Drives Business Unit since 2014. He has held various executive-level positions at Siemens since becoming CEO of the Cluster Western & Central Africa in 2008. His career spans 21 years and five continents. In 1994, Dirk Hoke began his professional career as R&D Engineer for process and software analysis in the automotive industry at Renault in Paris. In 1996, he joined Siemens through an international trainee programme with assignments in Germany, Argentina and Austria. He then held various management posts in the Transportation Systems Division based in Germany. He relocated to Sacramento, USA, as Head of the Transportation Systems restructuring team in 2001. Dirk Hoke continued his professional career at Siemens as General Manager for the Transrapid Propulsion and Power Supply Subdivision from 2002 to 2005 including the Shanghai “Maglev” project. He was then promoted to President of Siemens Transportation Systems China and made Siemens the largest foreign railway supplier in the country. In 2008, Dirk Hoke moved to Morocco to lead Siemens’ Africa activities. He returned to Germany in 2011 to become the Division CEO of Industrial Solutions with the special task to build up the services business for the Industry Sector. Afterwards, he was called upon to restructure the Large Drives Business Unit. Dirk Hoke holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the Technical University of Brunswick, Germany. In 2010, Dirk Hoke became a member of the Young Global Leader Class of the World Economic Forum and in 2013, member of the Baden Baden Entrepreneur Talks. Born on 2 April 1969, Dirk Hoke is married with two children