Walden Impact by Bakel Walden

“It’s not the complexity.
It’s the next step.”

Bakel Walden

Profile

Bakel Walden advises senior leadership and strategy leads on high-stakes strategic decisions. His profile combines more than two decades of leadership across international media and event organisations with experience in corporate strategy and M&A, digital platform launches and turnarounds in international markets.

Roles across Germany, Luxembourg and Greece, with a network anchored in Switzerland and carrying impact internationally.

Services

Walden Impact is senior advisory for situations where stakeholder interests come together and decisions face public scrutiny. Collaborative, clear in position, consistently focused on impact.

Reshaping Media & Content

Strategic advisory for media organisations and content platforms repositioning themselves, shaped by changing audiences, new competition or structural reform. Walden Impact works with executive leadership on how a viable next chapter takes shape, from strategy to structures.

Case: Play Suisse Plattform
Scaling Events & Markets

Strategic guidance for live formats and market launches that need to scale in reach, complexity and visibility. Walden Impact works with organisations scaling an existing format or entering a new market, in Switzerland, across DACH or internationally. The focus: strategic business development, stakeholder dynamics and public impact.

Case: Eurovision Song Contest
Aligning Governance & Stakeholders

Advisory where governance, stakeholder dynamics and public visibility meet. Walden Impact works with boards, executive leadership and trustee organisations to build common ground between competing interests without compromising their independence. The central question: which decisions hold and how do they remain credible under pressure.

Case: Alpha TV

Clarity in transformation in leadership in decisions in change in growth in direction

Cases

When complexity increases, interests clash, and decisions must be made under pressure, guidance is needed. Bakel Walden is called upon when clarity, structure, and leadership are required.

ESC — Chairman of the Reference Group

Governance, Krisenmanagement und Reformen für das grösste Live-Musikformat der Welt
Play Suisse

Building a national streaming platform and renegotiating the content architecture
Alpha TV

Programming reform and stakeholder alignment against the backdrop of the Eurozone crisis, 2008-2012

Stations

RTL Group

2002-2008

Strategy Executive at RTL Group in Luxembourg, previously in an editorial role at RTL Germany in Cologne. Programme development, international acquisitions and digital business development.
Alpha TV

2009-2012

Head of Programme Development, Strategy and Scheduling at RTL Group's Alpha TV in Athens. Repositioning, format development and stakeholder alignment amid the European debt crisis.
SRF

2012-2017

Head of Programme Strategy at SRF in Zurich. Strategic planning, market and audience research, audience reporting reform and young audiences initiative.
SRG SSR

2018-2025

Member of the Executive Board and Director of Development and Offering. Digital transformation, research, internal communications, events, international relations and the film industry.
Schweizerische UNESCO-Kommission

since 2020

Mandate
Member of the Swiss Commission for UNESCO, the national link between UNESCO and Switzerland in education, science, culture and communication.
IMD

2022-2023

Education
Executive MBA in Lausanne. Focus on strategy, leadership and change in complex organisations.
EBU / ESC Reference Group

2023-2025

Mandate
Chair of the ESC Reference Group, the governing body of the Eurovision Song Contest. Format, rules, financing and final authority in crises.
INSEAD

2024-2025

Education
International Directors Programme in Fontainebleau. Board service, boardroom dynamics and director-level impact.