Who am I and where do I come from?

​Born in Mainz, Germany, married, one daughter 11 years young (which keeps me young). Due to the fact that both sides of my family have been heavily impacted by exodus and expulsion after world war II, a solid education was always a big topic for me. In particular positively this was influenced by my grandfather who has always encouraged me to focus on education – as with a good education in hand you can start nearly everywhere in the world from zero – if required – rather on material values which you might not carry with you – in the worst case. And to be even more “solid” I have started with an education in banking, followed by studies and internships in Germany and abroad (USA, Uruguay, Japan, and France).

As of today, I can look back on 25+ years professional, multinational working experience in the fields of Marketing & Sales, Product Management, Consulting, Change Management with the focus on financial services and ICT industries and I have never lost interest in new exiting technologies and love to work with teams across the globe – and for sure never lost the interest to travel around the globe – now with my family – aswell.​

How did I get to tecRacer?

​I was for nearly 10 years the managing director of the German branch of a London based niche consultancy, focusing on change management / governance & control of large outsourcing programs (data center consolidations and migrations). Due to various reasons, at this time we have lost the largest assignment and instead of out phasing my valuable team, I was looking for new partnerships and clients – and came across the AWS cloud. In fact the first time I have heard about Amazon retail was already in 1998 when introducing one of the first online-shops in Germany (application service providing = pre-successor of SaaS) and I am Amazon retail client since 2000. As AWS is so successful, my idea was that there will be a lot of demand for data center consolidation and migrations into the AWS cloud.

Guess what, when looking in 2016 for an AWS training partner, my former AWS partner manager has highly recommended tecRacer as AWS partner of choice. When looking on the tecRacer service portfolio, I have seen that tecRacer has a rich and healthy AWS service portfolio (AWS trainings, consulting, AWS centric development and managed services). But at this time no project / programme management capabilities. As I have seen a high potential (and my former UK management was not really up for a new AWS cloud journey) I have issued and presented a business case for a venture to the founders of tecRacer Group. Luckily I convinced the management team to found tecRacer Project Management GmbH as a newmember of tecRacer Group focusing on project and program management. Three valuable members of my previous team followed me to the new venture.​

My experience with tecRacer

​When joining tecRacer I have immediately realized that tecRacer is very different– in a positive way – comparing to most of my former employers (and clients in particular global acting private and investment banks):

At tecRacer staff benefits from an open communication culture, working at eye level, lots of trust rather than being trapped in hierarchies and politicalmine fields. Working for tecRacer gives you a lot of freedom, however, with freedom comes responsibilities and for sure you must fulfill expectations.

As a co-founder (of the Project Management Team) the first two years were an extremely tough challenge, as I was doing a lot, except of successfully closing projects for project managers. Looking back: When enriching tecRacer portfolio with project managementcapabilities, this was exactly the right idea, however, this very good idea came two years too early for the market. And even more I appreciate tecRacer as employer, as the team shows great perseverance and patience and we have never lost trust in the idea per see. To be honest, if I would have done the same venture together with an US or UK based company, I would very likely not doing the same job anymore 🙂 What has paid off in the meantime: tecRacer has successfully achieved the migration competency, and we have as of today 8 migration projects at different maturity levels in the pipeline, backed by very attractive AWS funding programs.

Bottom line

​Come as you are, as long as you are open minded, love to work at eye level and if you do not need somebody to tell you how to do your job. From my personal working experiences and managing teams, I have learned that you can acquire missing knowledge at ease (and with tecRacer you are at the source of AWS education), but you can never ever change personalities.

Thus, if you love to be micromanaged, like long decision-making processes, expect pronounced hierarchies, tecRacer is unfortunately not your employer of choice.