Ronald Schaefer is Senior Principal, Consulting. He is also Head of the CEIV Pharma Program at IATA and responsible for the Validations of the CEIV Live Animals Program. He was born in Hamburg, Germany, raised in Mexico and educated in the US. After long-term professional assignments in Germany, Spain, Malaysia, Kuwait, Venezuela and Canada, he has been based in Miami for the last 10 years working for IATA. Before joining IATA, Mr. Schaefer accumulated vast experience in the air transport field working as a consultant for Lufthansa Consulting GmbH, Roland Berger Strategy Consultants GmbH and Ferrostaal México. He has worked on corporate restructuring, strategy, post-merger integration, market and competitive analysis, safety, risk management initiatives among others, in the transportation industry on all continents. 

At IATA he developed in conjunction with the IATA Pharma subject matter expert the CEIV Pharma pre-assessment tools and materials to facilitate successful independent validation of organizations. He also led the initial independent assessment Proof-of-Concept for Singapore Air Terminal Services (SATS) and is now managing the program worldwide. Since its start he has managed 291 certifications, +350 assessments and +310 validations. 

He is also jointly responsible for the development and implementation of new CEIV initiatives such as CEIV Live Animal, officially launched in April 2018 and CEIV Fresh launched in 2019. In conjunction with the IATA Live Animal and Perishable expert, he is also developing the pre-/assessment tools for validations of organizations and jointly managing the on-going pilots.

He holds a Bachelor of Science (B. Sc.) in Business Administration from California State University at Sonoma and Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Georgetown University.