Elmar Thyen is Head of Corporate Communications and Strategic Marketing for the local utility WSW Wuppertaler Stadtwerke GmbH. The 52-year-old  CCO is  responsible for  press  and  public  relations  as well as for policy and strategic marketing.  Mr. Thyen started his career as a journalist in the mid 1980s after studying journalism at Dortmund University and working as a trainee at the Ruhr Nachrichten daily newspaper. Between 1986 and 1991 he worked as a radio and TV reporter and news editor for the German public broadcasting companies WDR and ARD. He then became Managing Editor, then Editor-in-Chief and Station Manager at a local radio station, Antenne Unna, in North Rhine-Westphalia for twelve years before entering the energy industry in 2009. From 2009 – 2017 he headed the Corporate Communications Department at Trianel GmbH, Germany`s leading network of public utility companies.