Once upon a time a fair maiden was born in a far away country (isn’t that how all German fairy tales start?). No, don’t worry, it will not go on like this. It has taken long enough to finally hand this report in and I will not test Neerja’s patience any longer. But where do I start? 

I guess it all started with my  parents. My father is German and my mother comes from Austrian. In both cases the families have a history of migrating and by now you find members of these two “Barbarian tribes” in all continents. The combination of genes from both families must have created something like “nomad” personalities. My older brother lives in the US (sometimes - if he is not traveling) and I get restless if I don’t move every three years. In spite of the distances between us we are very close. I am extremely blessed with my parents who brought us up with a huge amount of unconditional love and offered us lots of opportunities. 

When I was 10 my family moved to a small city called Ingelheim (wineries, asparagus, cherries, plums, and a pharmaceutical company) a little south of Frankfurt, where they are still living. As I grew older the mundane country life did not satisfy me any longer and the nomad tendencies broke free. Luckily my parents and teachers supported me to go to places like the Bahamas, Britain and the US to attend school and my first two years of college. 

In 1982 I came back to Germany and in 1986 I got my university degree in management; the majors were sales & marketing , human resources and controlling. Being born in Leverkusen, the home of Bayer, obviously did some damage, since I am still attracted by the beauty of chemical plants and other production sites, particularly at night ( I am not joking!). Consequently I joined Germany’s largest chemical company: BASF. For the first six years with BASF I was a Human Resources Manager and recruited 1,000 graduates, designed salary systems, reorganized departments, implemented a performance management system, created a management information system, and build up an internal consulting group. All the good things HR people do. Then it was time to move on. 

For the next three years I worked as an in-house trainer and business consultant within BASF and supported the global sales & marketing divisions in developing and executing their business strategies. One of the highlights was to work with the colleagues in Eastern Europe during the transition from a communist system to more marked oriented economies. The other highlight was to train the various BASF managers within Asia Pacific on managerial accounting and other business skills.

Asia – a whole new world for me 

I had always dreamed of traveling within Asia, (well, next to being a female version of Robin Hood or heroic like Jean of Arc…) but I was in for a few surprises. One Monday morning my boss asked me, out of the blue, whether I was willing to move to China within the next ten days. Mind you, he was talking about a period of four years not just a business trip! Within an hour I had made up my mind and ten days later I arrived in Shanghai – my new home. Needless to say that neither my boyfriend nor my parents were pleased! 

For the next four years I headed the training and development activities of BASF in East Asia which at that time meant responsibility for the development of 4,000 people in 20 companies all over China, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan. The workforce was very inexperienced at that time and the expectations of the management very high. Business reality and the Asian crisis forced us to move up the learning curve very quickly! 

Living in Shanghai proved to be extremely exciting and challenging. People and processes were so unpredictable, the concepts of time, logical thinking and problem solving so different. I am proud to say that the projects and programs my team and I implemented have actually made a big difference to the knowledge and skill level of BASF’s workforce and consequently to the business results. This is the beauty of starting grass roots operations – you see the progress. 

When BASF offered me the next promotion back in good old Germany I decided to finally leave them after almost 13 years, to try my luck as a consultant and to stay in Asia. I joined AchieveGlobal, who had been my largest supplier of training solutions over the years in Asia. AchieveGlobal is the world’s leading training and consulting company for sales improvement, leadership, organizational development and service initiatives. We work mainly with multinationals to help them turn their business strategy into results – through their people. In many cases this involves training implementations of some sort and it always means working with people.  

That is what has kept me in HR related professions for so long. I find it rewarding to work with adults, to help them develop new ideas, acquire new skills and become more successful. I enjoy identifying potential in people and showing them ways to utilize it. The influence of those adults, mainly managers, on the lives of other people is strong and the more knowledgeable and skillful they are, the better for the people around them.