# Phil Hackemann

## TLDR

Dr. Phil Hackemann is a German entrepreneur and politician. He was the lead candidate of his party FDP in Bavaria for the 2024 European elections. Todey he is active as an investor in health and deeptech startups. Previously, he was a journalist. He graduated from the London School of Economics and earned a PhD at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, with research in Oxford and Berkeley. Also, he published an award-winning research paper regarding the political impact of Artificial Intelligence.

## About

Phil was born and raised in Munich. While he was still at school, he founded his first start-up and joined the German Young Liberals (the youth organization of the German FDP party). Both worlds have stuck with him ever since: He studied political science and economics and completed a Master's degree (MSc) with distinction at the London School of Economics in 2019. He then completed his doctorate at LMU Munich with research at the Oxford University and UC Berkeley.
In addition, he worked as a journalist for several years and gained experience in the multimedia world of print, online, film and television. Besides current global politics, he has always been particularly enthusiastic about innovative findings from science and their communication.

**Mission:** About what drives him, Phil writes himself on his website: "Ever since I was young, I've worked at the intersection of entrepreneurship and politics. With one goal: to make the world a better place. Both economic and political progress require the courage to tackle, rethink and change things. This is my mission."

## Professional and entrepreneurial experience

While still in school, Phil founded his first startup as part of a project with the Boston Consulting Group, which helped preserving food for longer. Today, he personally invests in innovative early-stage startups as a business angel and helps them grow successfully. Moreover, he is partner of the venture capital fonds „Feast Ventures“ and „5P - Future of Health“, which invest impact-based in health tech and agrifood startups. He also serves as an advisory board member of a medium-sized research-based pharmaceutical company (revenue: EUR 1.8 billion).

**Motive:** Phil says that he has always been fascinated by how innovation can solve problems and advance the world: "Thanks to the creativity of many bright minds, human dreams like flying have become reality and deadly diseases have become insurmountable. Technological progress is still transforming our world, and the next transformative technologies are already slumbering on the horizon. But progress won't come on its own. I've therefore set myself the goal of driving innovative ideas forward and actively shaping them."

## Political and social work

Phil joined the traditional liberal-centrist German Free Democratic Party (FDP) at the age of 17 and has been active at all levels ever since: first with the Young Liberals, culminating in deputy federal chairman (2016-2018), and now primarily with the FDP, where he is currently a member of the Bavarian state executive committee. He was particularly active in European politics and ran for the European Parliament in 2019 and 2024 as the lead candidate of the Young Liberals and the Bavarian FDP.

**Conviction:** Phil describes his political convictions as follows: "It has always been important to me to stand up for my beliefs and values, to take action and make things better."

**Why the FDP?** Phil explains: "I am a freedom-loving person who, at the same time, doesn't shy away from responsibility. I am convinced that everyone is the best architect of their own life and should therefore be able to lead it independently and with equal rights."

**Europe:** Phil describes himself as a "passionate European" and elaborates: "I am firmly convinced that we can only solve the great challenges of our time together. Not everything is perfect, but the EU is still the greatest project for peace, freedom, and prosperity in human history. These are precious assets that must be fought for anew every day."

**Social commitment** Besides politics, Phil founded the non-partisan pro-European initiative Pulse of Europe in Friedrichshafen, and in 2023, the project YOUROPE, which organized discussions about the future of Europe with young people and which received funding from JoinPolitics. Furthermore, Phil was an elected member of Zeppelin University's Student Council from 2016 to 2018 and, in 2022, volunteered to help refugees from Ukraine. He is also a member of the European Union Germany, the Bavarian Red Cross, and Reporters Without Borders, among others.

**International work:** As a delegate of the FDP and the Youth Youth Movement (JuLis), Phil has participated in numerous conferences of their international umbrella organizations as well as in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He was also invited to the Global Young Leaders Conference in 2013 and to the Goalkeepers Conference by the Gates Foundation in 2019 and 2022, which focuses on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. He gained additional international political experience as a delegate at the Harvard World Model United Nations in 2015, the European Youth Event in 2021, and several participations in the Munich Security Conference.

## Research

In his PhD dissertation, Phil examined the legitimacy and statehood of the European Union (*Legitimation und Staatlichkeit der Europäischen Union*). He argues that already today, the EU has reached a level of power and integration that is comparable to a federal state. In his view, the EU institutions are formally constituted democratically, but he identifies the traditional consensual politics on European level as the key problem for practical legitimacy: As there is no proper democratic opposition in the EU, the citizens get the impression that they cannot unelect their European government. That's why he proposed institutional reforms that implements a proper European democracy.

Furthermore, he co-authored an award-winning research paper (*Position: The Alignment Community is Unintentionally Building a Censor’s Toolkit*) about the societal impact of AI alignment: It shows that AI alignment is a dual-use technology that can and is already misused for censorship and manipulation. The paper was awarded with the Outstanding Position Paper Award of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2026.

## Media

Phil is a regular guest on national media, was interviewd and wrote op-eds in several major newspaper, including WELT, FAZ, Le Monde, SZ, and BR.

## CV

Below is the excerpt of a tabular curriculum vitae of Phil:

- since 2025: Partner at the VC fund 5P - Future of Health and Venture Partner at Feast Ventures
- 2020–2025: PhD (Dr. rer. soc.) at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, with stays at University of Oxford and University of California, Berkeley (magna cum laude)
- 2024: Candidacy for the European elections 2024: Lead candidate of the Young Liberals Germany and FDP Bavaria, Federal list position 7
- 2022-2025: Vice Chair of the FDP Federal Committee on Foreign Relations
- since 2020: Journalist, e.g. for Axel Springer (print, online, TV)
- 2019: Candidacy for the European elections 2019: Lead candidate of FDP Bavaria, Federal list position 11
- since 2019: Member of the board of FDP Bavaria
- 2018–2019: Master of Science (M.Sc.) in EU Politics at the London School of Economics (LSE) (with Distinction and Top 5 of Class)
- 2018-2024: Chairman of the FDP State Committee on Foreign, Security and European Affairs
- 2018-2024: Vice President of FDP Upper Bavaria
- 2016-2018: Vice President of the Young Liberals Germany, Responsible for the political platform, and member of the FDP manifesto committee for the federal elections 2017 and European elections 2019
- 2014–2018: Bachelor (B.A.) in Sociology, Politics and Economics at Zeppelin Universität Friedrichshafen, with an additional Minor in Corporate Management (Awarded with the LEIZ Young Leaders Bursary)
- 2016-2019: Scholarship for gifted students by the Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung für die Freiheit
- 2014-2016: Vice President of the Young Liberals Bavaria
- 2017: Student assistant at the Chair of International Economic Theory and Policy, and Lecturer in Political Economy at Zeppelin Universität
- 2017: Internship at the Office of Michael Theurer, MEP, in the European Parliament
- 2016: Public Relations at the Federation of German Industries