New Light And Building Director

Maria Hasselman hands over to Johannes Möller from July 2020.  Möller is an experienced graduate trade-fair, congress and event manager, gathering sales experience with the Prolight + Sound trade fair for many years before spending four years as personal assistant to the President and Chief Executive Officer of Messe Frankfurt. Subsequently, in 2017, he was appointed Director of the Brand Management and Development Team in the company’s Technology Business Unit.

Johannes Möller is clear about the challenges facing the lighting and building-services sector. “My aim is to add to the experience of the fair for all concerned, including through the use of digital channels. Accordingly, the portfolio will soon be supplemented by a variety of formats, such as podcasts, online product and trend shows, as well as internet discussion forums”, says Möller. “At the same time, there can be no doubt that personal encounters are irreplaceable. This applies not only to confidence-building measures and product quality analysis but also, of course, to networking and the exchange of ideas and information. I am looking forward to achieving this aim by continuing the close working relationship with our cooperation partners, the ZVEI and ZVEH associations”, adds Möller.

With the handover of responsibility, Light + Building is also embarking on the next decade with a new managerial generation. Johannes Möller has been working together with Maria Hasselman since the beginning of the year, which gave her the opportunity to pass on the benefits of her extensive knowledge and experience, thus guaranteeing a smooth changeover in the interests of Light + Building and the worldwide brand family. Johannes Möller will report to Iris Jeglitza-Moshage, Senior Vice President of Messe Frankfurt.

Maria Hasselman will retire from Messe Frankfurt in August 2020. “Maria Hasselman has an unrivalled ability to immerse herself in highly complex subjects and was thus able to manage perfectly the trade-fair structures and marketing of Light + Building. Moreover, we profited from her ability to interconnect the different disciplines of this extremely varied sector and to understand the individual challenges facing them”, says Iris Jeglitza-Moshage honouring Maria Hasselman’s twenty years with the company. “I would like to have seen this year’s anniversary edition of Light + Building as the crowning glory of Maria Hasselman’s work. Unfortunately, the coronavirus put paid to this wish. We will miss her. At the same time, we wish her all the very best for the future.”

After working in sales for three years, Maria Hasselman assumed responsibility for Light + Building and its approx. 1,900 exhibitors from 80 countries in 2003. At that time, the trade fair attracted over 110,000 visitors to Frankfurt am Main – impressive figures that appear almost modest fifteen years later: in 2018, some 220,000 visitors from 150 countries came to Frankfurt am Main to see the products and services being presented by no less than 2,700 exhibitors.

“There was nothing automatic about the way Light + Building developed”, says Maria Hasselman. “One of the keys to success was interdisciplinary thinking and planning. It was no less necessary to establish links between the trade, artisans, the industry, planners and architects than between the various disciplines in the field of building-services technology. At the same time, this success would not have been possible without the commitment of our partners and the media”, adds Maria Hasselman.

Light + Building with Intersec Building will be held in Frankfurt am Main from 13 to 18 March 2022.