MUELLER, Nicolas

Dr. Nicolas Mueller joined GSD in 2010. He is Adjunct Professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and teaches “National Risk and Crisis Management”. His areas of interest and research are in risks to the modern society, strategic crisis management and geopolitics.

Nicolas Mueller, who has a Ph.D. in physics and a master of science in chemistry, became fascinated by this subject between 1987 and 1997, when he attended the classes and seminars in crisis management of Prof. Dr. Laurent F. Carrel. Since that time, he accumulated over 15 years of experience in risk- and crisis management:

Since 2007, Head of Federal Crisis Management Training in the Swiss Federal Chancellery, where he has the following responsibilities:

1. Crisis management advisor to the Swiss Federal Chancellor;
2. Individual crisis management consulting for and crisis management training of the crisis cells of the federal ministries;
3. Planning and conducting the federal Strategic Leadership Exercises;
4. Furthermore, he was responsible for the project “Federal crisis management system”

• Three years of experience in the Swiss Armed Forces Joint Staff, where he set up of a think tank specialized in analyzing new threats to Switzerland and developing contingency plans, was responsible for the Armed Forces Risk Management and PM for the Information Operations force.
• Four years of experience as a product- and project manager in risk management, controlling and as a consultant in corporate strategy in an international consulting firm, as well as in the Swiss administration;
• Three years of international missions in and assessments of war- and crisis areas as ICRC delegate / coordinator and as a member of a crisis cell (Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Kashmir, Central Asia, China, Cuba, Japan);
• As a general staff officer he was able to gain experience in crisis cell work and is presently a battalion commander as well as acting G2 (head of intelligence) in a mountain infantry brigade of the Swiss Armed Forces; he developed the risk management on the brigade level;
• After working as a grammar school teacher in physics and mathematics during his Ph.D., he resumed teaching 10 years ago and gives lectures in risk and crisis management and global trends to MBA students and crisis cells;
• In five years of management training, he acquired a master of international management, the MBA of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, Toronto (where he was awarded the title of Bregman Scholar in 2008) – and the global executive MBA of the University of St. Gallen;
• Over the last decade, he lead – or was a key contributor to – a dozen consulting projects in strategy, risk management or corporate social responsibility for several multi-national firms and international organizations in Europe, South East Asia, the Middle East as well as North- and South America;
• On the academic and research side, he wrote over twenty articles and term papersas well as a master thesis on risk- and crisis management related topics.

He is presently working on his DIR thesis on national crisis management at the Geneva School of Diplomacy.