Group Executive Board
Project logistics is our passion. The management of the Conceptum Logistics Group has many years of experience in forwarding and shipping, extensive financial expertise and international experience in all parts of the world. Reliable planning and carefully considered actions characterize our management structure. Short decision-making channels ensure high level of acceptance and long-term customer loyalty. These are just some of the added values that we create for our customers as an independent company.
Christian Rode
Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
- Christian Rode is the CEO of Conceptum Logistics Group Holding GmbH.
- He has more than 30 years of experience in project logistics.
- In 2002, he founded the company together with Norbert Goerlitz and Lars-Folke Schüle, both of whom are no longer with the company today.
- Previously, he worked as Trade Line Manager Australia and Canary Island at MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company GmbH, and as Forwarder and Manager at Hanseatisches See- und Landkontor GmbH.
- Christian Rode started his career as a full-blooded logistics specialist with his education as a trainee at Bertling Hamburg as agent of the MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company GmbH.
- For many years he volunteered as a trainer to a youth football team with a Hamburg sports club.
Rachel Kellett
Group Chief Business Development Officer (CBDO)
- Rachel Kellett is Group Chief Business Development Officer at Conceptum Logistics Germany GmbH.
- She has over 28 years’ experience in shipping and logistics.
- She has worked in various roles and sectors of the industry – for a container carrier and break bulk owner, as competitive broker, as commercial agent for the breakbulk and container liner trade and in project forwarding.
- Before joining Conceptum Logistics in 2019 she worked for over 21 years for the Belgian Ahlers Group.
- She has a strong link to Asia from the beginning of her career, working at a POL joint venture for their South East Asia breakbulk service in the 1990’s to most recently living and working in Shanghai.
- She studied for her Bachelor of Arts in the United States and her Traineeship was completed in the Port of Antwerp, Belgium with a small container feeder operator.
- Rachel was born in the United Kingdom, thereafter lived in 9 countries before finding a home in Hamburg.
Marc Hapanionek
President & CEO USA
- Marc Hapanionek is President & CEO USA at the Conceptum Logistics Group.
- He has more than 20 years of experience in the logistics industry.
- He has been working for Conceptum Logistics since 2006 and established the subsidiary in the USA in 2009, which he still manages today.
- His particular strengths focus on Chartering, Execution of large scale projects, contracts and management.
- He is member of the Railway Industrial Clearance Association and also a member of the Houston Maritime Arbitrators Association.
Silke Pettkus
Group Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
- Silke Pettkus is CFO at Conceptum Logistics Group Holding GmbH.
- Besides, she is currently finalizing her doctorate at the HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, affiliated to the Chair of Financial Management with a research focus in Private Equity.
- She gained many years of experience in the areas of corporate controlling and corporate finance in several positions at the Rickmers Group, Procter & Gamble and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
- Silke Pettkus holds a Master of Arts in International Accounting, Controlling and Taxation from ESB Business School, Reutlingen.
- She was heading the initiative Women@HHL and is engaged in increasing the visibility of women in leadership positions.
Prof. Dr. Mark-Ken Erdmann
Group Chief Administrative Officer (CAO)
- Prof. Dr. Mark-Ken Erdmann is CAO at Conceptum Logistics Group Holding GmbH.
- Mark-Ken Erdmann has 20 years of financial management experience, including acting as CFO of a shipping group/asset manager listed on the Frankfurt Prime Standard and with a subsidiary on SGX/Singapore, and as Chairman of a joint venture with an international private equity/financial investor.
- He started his career at Ernst & Young AG, followed by management positions at the media group Bertelsmann.
- Educational background: Studied economics at the Technical University of Dortmund, graduating with a degree in business administration, followed by a doctorate (Dr. rer. pol.) Executive development programmes at Insead Business School in Fontainebleau and Harvard Business School in Boston, membership of the Beta Gamma Sigma fraternity and appointment as the youngest honorary professor at HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management in Leipzig.
Information about the local management of the different countries can be found here.
