Riess, who has previously worked for media group Bertelsmann AG, will join the group from paper and pre-press supplier Mitsubishi Paper.
He will replace Timothy Balding in the role, who will become the new director general of the organisation.
Balding was formerly chief executive of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) beofre its merger with Ifra in July last year. A new position for Reiner Mittelbach, who was CEO of IFRA, is yet to be announced.
Riess will take up his new role on 1 February.
Read Journalism.co.uk's coverage of the first joint conference for WAN-IFRA, which took place in Hyderabad last month.
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