At yesterdayʼs meeting, the Swiss Solidarity Foundation Board elected Tony Burgener as its new director. The 53-year-old Valaiser will take up his post in Geneva in January 2012, when his predecessor Félix Bollmann retires after 12 years as director. Catherine Baud-Lavigne was appointed as deputy director.
Tony Burgener will follow Félix Bollmann, who has headed Swiss Solidarity with success for 12 years. The new director brings with him many years of experience in the fields of communication and humanitarian relief work and will move to Swiss Solidarity from Burson Marsteller Geneva.
Tony Burgener worked in Switzerland for many years as a journalist and then as a delegate of the International Committee of the Swiss Red Cross (ICRC) in Africa and the Middle East, before becoming Chief Press Officer and Head of the ICRC Private Fundraising Department in Geneva. He then held the position of Head of Media and Public Relations at the Swiss National Exhibition Expo.02 before finally changing to Deputy Director of Communications for the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Tony Burgener has been a member of senior management at Burson Marsteller since 2009. Walter Rüegg, President of Swiss Solidarity, is looking forward to working with the new director: «His extensive experience in a humanitarian environment as well as in the field of international communication make him ideally suited to his new role at Swiss Solidarity».
Deputy director
At the meeting on 16 May 2011, the Executive Committee of the Swiss Solidarity Foundation Board appointed Catherine Baud-Lavigne as deputy director. A native of Geneva, she holds a Masters from the London School of Economics and has been responsible for institutional affairs, administration and fundraising campaigns at the foundation for eleven years.
Swiss Solidarity, 1211 Geneva 8
