Christine Lagarde was born on 1 January 1956 in Paris. She studied social law in Aix-en-Provence, followed by English, business administration, and labour law in Paris. After completing her studies in 1981, she worked as a lawyer in Paris, and in 1999 became Chairwoman of Baker & McKenzie in Chicago, one of the largest international law firms. In 2005 she returned to Paris as Deputy Minister for Foreign Trade, was appointed Minister of Agriculture in the summer of 2007, and two months later became France's first female Minister of Economy and Finance. In 2011 she was elected Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, and since 2019 she has been President of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

Marc Hujer was born on 1 October 1968 in Darmstadt. He studied industrial engineering and economics in Darmstadt and Paris, trained and worked for ten years at the Süddeutsche Zeitung, including as a correspondent in Washington, and moved to SPIEGEL in 2005, where he now writes reportages and profiles. Hujer has published three books to date.