Lilium makes two changes to senior leadership team, and reaches 500th employee milestone

Lil­i­um has announced two changes to its senior lead­er­ship team, while at the same time announc­ing its 500th employ­ee.

Cur­rent Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer, Christo­pher Del­brück, is to leave lat­er this year for fam­i­ly rea­sons, with cur­rent Chief Com­mer­cial Offi­cer, Dr Remo Ger­ber, becom­ing the com­pa­ny’s first Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer.

Since Del­brück joined the busi­ness in 2019, Lil­i­um has gone on to secure more than $375 mil­lion in fund­ing for its Lil­i­um Jet ser­vice — from the likes of Atom­i­co, Bail­lie Gif­ford and Freigeist. The com­pa­ny has said the search for a replace­ment can­di­date is already under­way.

Com­ment­ing on his depar­ture, Lil­i­um co-founder and CEO, Daniel Wie­gand, said: “In a short space of time, Christo­pher has brought a great deal of pro­fes­sion­al­ism to Lil­i­um. Not only have we made impor­tant progress with fundrais­ing dur­ing his tenure, but he has also played a crit­i­cal role in set­ting up a cor­po­rate struc­ture that will allow the com­pa­ny to scale beyond its cur­rent size.

“Our inten­tion has always been to not only devel­op and man­u­fac­ture the Lil­i­um Jet, but to also oper­ate a Lil­i­um region­al air mobil­i­ty ser­vice. With the cre­ation of the Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer role, we’re tak­ing the next step towards that vision. In his new role, Remo will focus not just on build­ing the com­mer­cial part­ner­ships we need to deliv­er the Lil­i­um ser­vice but on all aspects of our pro­posed com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.”

Del­brück, added: “I am grate­ful for a fan­tas­tic time at Lil­i­um. While it has been a dif­fi­cult deci­sion to make, I need to set the right pri­or­i­ties for my fam­i­ly and I wish the team all the best in bring­ing Lilium’s remark­able vision to life.”

Lil­i­um has also announced the appoint­ment of for­mer Air­bus employ­ee Audrey Tau­ran, who has become the com­pa­ny’s 500th employ­ee.

Tau­ran joins Lil­i­um as VP Pro­cure­ment, bring­ing with her more than 15 years of expe­ri­ence in var­i­ous engi­neer­ing and pro­cure­ment roles at Air­bus, most recent­ly as VP Pro­cure­ment, Struc­ture and Mate­r­i­al in their Defense and Space divi­sion.

Com­ment­ing on the mile­stone, Wie­gand said: “It’s hum­bling for us to see Lilium’s con­tin­ued growth. In a lit­tle over five years we’ve gone from four co-founders to a team of over 500 tal­ent­ed and enthu­si­as­tic ‘Lil­ians’, bring­ing expe­ri­ence from a huge range of lead­ing engi­neer­ing orga­ni­za­tions from SpaceX and Rolls-Royce, to For­mu­la 1 teams and NASA.”