About
I have carried the situations I now advise on myself.
For over twenty years I have done People work where it is hardest: in companies growing fast, expanding internationally, acquiring, or having to reset themselves in difficult phases. I have built a People function and a company culture from zero, led teams and owned budgets, and accompanied leadership teams through situations no textbook covers. Including the hardest one: winding down a company, with people treated respectfully throughout. In the termination conversations, employees thanked us for their time there.
So I know the questions I advise on today from the inside. I know how the night before a separation conversation feels, how quickly a reorganisation is finished on paper and how long it takes in people's heads.
On top of that comes training that is rare in my role: eighteen months in mediation and conflict management, followed by six months in coaching. I use it daily, in the way I communicate, in individual and team coaching, and wherever conflicts surface early and are still small.
To me, people are a precondition for its success. Without them there is no product, no innovation, no customer relationship and no strategy that gets executed. I see myself as the link between the company and its people.
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20+
years of People leadership
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10 → 150
employees scaled through
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300
employees under my responsibility
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50+
managers supported
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6
countries across previous roles
Where I have worked
Where this experience comes from.
The path started in hospitality, where every single day shows what service culture and operational excellence actually mean. Then tech and scale-ups: building and leading People functions, accompanying organisations through growth, acquisitions and restructuring.
- HolidayCheck
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Director People & Culture
Around 300 employees, stabilising the organisation after redundancies.
Germany, Switzerland, Poland
- Cliqz, with MyOffrz and Ghostery
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Chief Company Performance Officer
Start-up, grown from ten to around 150 people. At the end, the wind-down of the company.
Germany, USA
- HackFwd
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Operations Geek
Pre-seed fund, helped shape how the company was built. More than ten tech start-ups accompanied in its portfolio.
Germany, Austria, Poland, United Kingdom
2021 to 2023
2013 to 2020
2010 to 2013
Results
What came out of it.
Figures from my own operational responsibility, across several companies and years. Deliberately without attribution to individual stations.
- Time-to-hire under 30 days
- counted from application received to offer accepted, with a clear process, fixed interview days and a decision on the day of the final interview.
- Two months to full effectiveness for newbies
- through a programme every newbie goes through together, with a view into every part of the business.
- Attrition halved
- through communication, enabled managers and a newly built onboarding programme.
- First-time leadership roles made to hold
- people promoted without prior leadership experience, supported through workshops and individual coaching.
- Company culture built from zero
- values developed with the team, plus the rituals, formats and tools that carry them in daily work, anchored in communication, decisions, recruiting, feedback and leadership routines.
What I believe
Five principles.
High performance comes out of high appreciation
People who are seen perform better and stay longer. So appreciation belongs in processes, leadership routines and metrics, not in a mission statement.
Practice before theory
I have carried every situation I advise on myself: building up, growth, integration, restructuring, through to winding a company down.
Understanding comes before performance
People need the whole picture before they can be effective. That is why I build onboarding as a programme across all areas, and explain changes before introducing them.
Clarity, even when it is uncomfortable
I tell you what I see and propose what to do first. That includes raising uncomfortable things early, while they are still small.
Structures that work without me
I stand for enablement: at the end of a collaboration the organisation can do more on its own than before.
High performance comes from high appreciation.
There is research on this. A working paper from the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford analyses around one million employee surveys across 1,782 publicly listed US companies and finds a positive association between workplace wellbeing and both profitability and firm value. An association, not proof of cause. But a reason to take seriously the conditions under which people work.
De Neve, Kaats & Ward: Workplace Wellbeing and Firm Performance , Working Paper 2304, University of Oxford, 2023.
Let’s talk about your organisation.
30 minutes, no strings attached. You describe your situation, and I tell you honestly whether and how I can help.