Stefan von Holtzbrinck is the CEO of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, a Stuttgart-based holding company formed by three entities: Springer Nature (majority ownership), Macmillan Publishers, and Holtzbrinck Digital, Information, and Services. The group parents such companies as Springer, Nature, Scientific American, Digital Science, Macmillan Learning, St. Martin’s Press, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Picador, S. Fischer Verlage, Rowohlt Verlag and Die ZEIT. It has ownership and stakes in over 50 Internet companies and funds around the world like Holtzbrinck Ventures, Rethink Education, GSV Education, Rocket Internet Capital, Founders Factory Europe, BtoV, lecturio, iversity, epubli, gutefrage.de, NetDoktor, pflege.de, Miamed, among others.

Von Holtzbrinck studied law and literature in Tübingen and Munich and earned his PhD in media law from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität. He has held positions at Bloomsbury, Kirch Media Group, and at the New Media division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, including as managing director of Nature Publishing Group, director of Macmillan, and, since 2001, as CEO of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.

A member of the executive committee of the Max Planck Society, von Holtzbrinck serves as chairman of the Max-Planck-Förderstiftung and the Kuratorium Kinderfreundliches Stuttgart. He is also a board member of the Bürgerstiftung Stuttgart and of the Business and Industry advisory board of the Goethe Institut.