Monika Piel (born 9 April 1951 in

Bensberg Bergisch Gladbach () is a city in the Cologne/Bonn Region of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and capital of the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis (district). Geography Bergisch Gladbach is located east of the river Rhine, approx. 10 kilometers east o ...

) is a German television journalist and radio journalist.

Life and career

Piel studied

Business economics Business economics is a field in applied economics which uses economic theory and quantitative methods to analyze business enterprises and the factors contributing to the diversity of organizational structures and the relationships of firms with ...

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

. Afterwards she studied Jura and

Oriental Studies Oriental studies is the academic field that studies Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology. In recent years, the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Middle Eastern stud ...

without graduating. During her studies she worked as an assistant at the panel discussion ''Der Internationale Frühschoppen'' under

Werner Höfer Werner Höfer (21 March 1913, in Kaisersesch, Rhine Province – 26 November 1997, in Cologne) was a German journalist. He started his career as a Nazi propagandist, working for the newspaper '' Das Reich''. From 1933 to 1945 he was a member o ...

. From 1979 to 1989 she worked as an editor and presenter for the current radio magazines of WDR 2. From 1982 to 1984 she worked for

WDR WDR may refer to: * Waddell & Reed (stock ticker: WDR), an American asset management and financial planning company * Walt Disney Records, an American record label of the Disney Music Group * WDR neuron, a type of neuron involved in pain signall ...

as a freelance journalist in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, In recognized minority languages of Portugal: :* mwl, República Pertuesa is a country located on the Iberian Peninsula, in Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Macaronesian ...

. From 1989 to 1993 Piel was a radio correspondent for economic and financial policy at the WDR studio in

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

. She then spent a year as head of the radio programme group for business, agriculture, environment and transport. In 1994 she was appointed as an editor-in-chief of radio and became a program director at WDR 2. From the end of 1997 to 2007 she was radio director of WDR and from 2001 to 2003 she headed the ARD Radio Commission. On 1 April 2007, she took over as the new director of WDR the successor to Fritz Pleitgen. When she was elected to the Broadcasting Council, she received 38 votes with two dissenting votes and two abstentions. Piel had no competitors after two candidates, ZDF editor-in-chief Nikolaus Brender and

NDR NDR may refer to: Computing * Non delivery report, a return email message to a sender indicating failed message delivery * Network Data Representation, an implementation of the OSI model presentation layer Science and technology * Negative differ ...

Justiciar Werner Hahn, had withdrawn. From 2007 to 2013 she worked as director of German broadcaster WDR. She prematurely terminated her employment on 30 April 2013 for health reasons. She had

sleep disorder A sleep disorder, or somnipathy, is a medical disorder of an individual's sleep patterns. Some sleep disorders are severe enough to interfere with normal physical, mental, social and emotional functioning. Polysomnography and actigraphy are tes ...

s and

tachycardia Tachycardia, also called tachyarrhythmia, is a heart rate that exceeds the normal resting rate. In general, a resting heart rate over 100 beats per minute is accepted as tachycardia in adults. Heart rates above the resting rate may be normal ( ...

and was diagnosed with

arteriosclerosis Arteriosclerosis is the thickening, hardening, and loss of elasticity of the walls of arteries. This process gradually restricts the blood flow to one's organs and tissues and can lead to severe health risks brought on by atherosclerosis, which ...

in January 2013.Interview mit der Zeitschrift ''Stern''
stern.de 30. Oktober 2013
/ref> From 2011 to mid-2016, she was CEO of the Cologne Cathedral Cultural Foundation and has been a member of the Board of Trustees since August 2016. Piel is married to the WDR 2 radio representer Roger Handt. They have a daughter and live in Voreifel.

External links

* *
Monika Piel at WDR
2010

FAZ, 27 January 2013

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Piel, Monika People from Bergisch Gladbach German television journalists German broadcast news analysts 20th-century German journalists 21st-century German journalists 1951 births Living people Westdeutscher Rundfunk German women television journalists ARD (broadcaster) people Westdeutscher Rundfunk people 20th-century German women 21st-century German women