In the following, we introduce you to the trainers and coaches of the Femtec Career-Building Programme. Get to know their career stages, their most concise career experiences and their personal recommendations. You can view this additional information via mouseover.
Aleksandra Luboinska Career Development, Negotiation
Anja Henningsmeyer Career Development, Negotiation
Astrid Dinda Career Development
Barbara Hoyer Career Development, Building Sustainable Networks
Birgit Rüdesheim Career Development, Building Sustainable Networks
Dr. Franka Schröder Negotiation und Self-Confidence and Assertiveness
Dr. Corinna E. Pregla Self-Confidence and Assertiveness
Gesa Hauser Leading Myself and Others
Guido Medl Self-confidence and Assertiveness
Julia Finsterwalder Leading Myself and Others
Katrin Brinkhoff Innovation & Co-Creation, Leading Myself and Others
Klara Lindner Innovation & Co-Creation
Jasmin Justen Building Networks
Irmi Schäffl Building Networks
Sarah Needham Building Networks
Selma Hadzic Career-Building, Negotiation
What are your professional milestones?
Three years in HR consulting where I was able to talk to hundreds of people about their (true) reasons for quitting, 23 years as a professional and executive trainer, during which I learned so much about the world from my participants.
What is your most defining career experience?
Two years with a bad supervisor. That showed me what NOT to do as a manager.
What do you recommend to applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
Be clear about what is important to YOU. Have the courage to claim it. The worst thing that can happen is that you hear a “no.” If you don’t ask, you have denied yourself the fulfillment of your needs.
What are your professional milestones?
Many different professional experiences have shaped my life and each station was significant. Every single one taught me something crucial. I was a freelance journalist, visual artist & gallery owner, festival manager, owner of an image agency in Hong Kong. I am a non-fiction author, lecturer, voluntary judge and managing director of the hessische Film- und Medienakademie, which I established together with the people involved in 2008. And that’s why the the plain and simple understanding …
What is your most defining career experience?
… if a job demands more output from me than it provides input, the time for something new and different has come. I am deeply convinced that every professional occupation should also serve to unfold my own potential. The courage to learn, to unlearn and to relearn is what keeps us awake and fit in a constantly changing (working) environment.
What do you recommend to applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
Participate! When I was a student, there was no recognition that soft skills were actually key competencies and that business networks enormously empower the career. Today, we don’t just know it – with networks like Femtec, there is even the possibility to integrate such important factors into your life during your studies. For this reason: Participate!
What are your professional milestones?
What is your most defining career experience?
What do you recommend to applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
“Some people want it to happen – some wish it would happen – and others make it happen.
(Michael Jordan)
What are your professional milestones?
What is your most defining career experience?
These experiences have shaped and taught me the most: When I first dared to quit, I had the wonderful experience that the “right” doors always open if you are brave enough to go your authentic way.
When I co-founded a company, I realized that you can do much more than you think. And you continue to grow with colleagues, customers and business partners who believe you can do even more. And last but not least: a burnout showed me that passion and “a mode of functioning” should never come at the expense of healthy self-care.
What do you recommend to applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
Use the Femtec impulses and network to follow your own individual path. And don’t wait to be ready to go for your dream or career aspiration. You only become ready by setting out on your journey. With Femtec’s Career-Building Programme you are already on your way.
What are your professional milestones?
What is your most defining career experience?
My most defining career experience was “the happy moments”: That information about the profession of a physiotherapist fell into my hands at the right moment – and I decided to take this apprenticeship. And that a friend explained to me over a glass of wine that I didn’t have to be a therapist when I studied psychology, but that there were other fields of work – and I chose industrial psychology. When my tax advisor said to my ideas about the sabbatical “Who, if not you? And when, if not now?” – and I quit my beloved job the next day. And the moment I thought I was just signing a form for the tax office – and I realized in that moment: I just started my own business. I am curious about the next moment 🙂
What do you recommend to applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
My recommendation for applicants to the program? Maybe more like a thought that I often have when I work with the scholarship holders and experience them in the program and with each other. It is ” I would have loved taking part in such a program back then”.
Alternative: Be yourself – the others already exist.
What are your professional milestones?
What is your most defining career experience?
Before moving from England to Italy, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to handle this new professional challenge because I had to learn a lot of new things. My dad said to me at the time: You’re in your early 30s and not about to retire. You will still be given new tasks very often in your career, where you will first be a beginner. But with time, you’ll also have expertise in the field. Surprise: He was right!
What do you recommend to applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
Reach for the stars! I’ve been telling people for more than 20 years that I want to be in Formula 1. Most people thought it was impossible. Nothing is impossible as long as you believe in yourself.
What are your professional milestones?
In my first job I was a classical solo singer and travelled internationally a lot. While working, I studied cultural management and later psychology (M.A., B.Sc.) at various universities and did a doctorate on a topic “between” music/cultural studies and psychology. My field of work was the stage for a long time, as I also did moderation and representation work in educational and business contexts besides and after singing. Today I help other people to develop their personality in front of and behind the stage. I am not interested in promises of success under the sign of a social paradigm of conformity; rather, I want to encourage people to find their individual form of expression and thus an increase in quality of life. As a transporter of the psychic, my medium is voice & language.
What is your most defining career experience?
Not to believe in “the one career” – but in lifelong learning and thus in new tasks at every age.
What do you recommend to applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
A goal- and expectation-open approach to encounters, which often generate experiences which are not – in the sense of a career plan – predictable and which are usually much more crucial to personal development than theories and concepts, because: ” Alles wirkliche [Er-]Leben ist Begegnung ” (something like “Real experience is encounter.”) (Martin Buber).
What are your professional milestones?
Each station was instructive in itself – both professionally and personally. In combination with training alongside the job: very valuable for maturing as a person.
What is your most defining career experience?
What do you recommend to applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
Always take a break, get out of “doing” and see if you want to be where you are. And then make a conscious and courageous decision.
What are your professional milestones?
What is your most defining career experience?
What goes around comes around in all directions, whether for the good or the less good.
What do you recommend to applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
Do what you do from your inner conviction and then persevere.
Leading Myself and Others
What are your professional milestones?
What is your most defining career experience?
In general: recognizing how much my socialization as a woman from a working:class family shaped me, my self-esteem and appearance, and emancipating myself.
Specifically: One of my most formative and recent experiences: Having the courage and self-awareness to stop doing something when it doesn’t feel right and isn’t good for me. Knowing in that moment and also having it confirmed a year later: It was the right decision.
What do you recommend to applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
I wish I had had more confidence earlier (professionally and academically). And that’s what I wish for the applicants, too: Recognize, value and develop themselves and their own potential. Also, and in particular, to recognize the strengths that we ourselves do not perceive as strengths at all, but rather as things we take for granted. Because these are not a matter of course, but something special.
What are your professional milestones?
My background as the head of an EU education project for women (2002-2005) was meaningful. The experience as a referent at the Federal Ministry (BMFSFJ) for a media project and the work in selection procedures at the Foreign Office gave me insight into complex structures. My work as a moderator is also driven by my work as a cultural journalist (for ZDF, among others). As a moderator, trainer and coach for executives, I have been supporting my clients in change processes and in the course of digitalization across all industries for 18 years. The time I spent working independently was then less a “station” than “constant learning and transformation”. And supporting women in the MINT sector – also through Femtec – is a meaningful pleasure for me!
What is your most defining career experience?
I would like to divide this into “3 phases of career”.
During my studies: the exploratory view beyond my own nose, trying out and getting to know different organizational cultures.
After my studies: in any case: mentors from whom I was able to learn and who supported and encouraged me. I still think of them today!
In 18 years of professional life: the experience and the systemic view. Also the confidence that many processes take place in intervals. (Even as a North German I appreciate the optimistic Cologne saying:”hätt noch immer jot jejange…”- something like “it always went well…”)
And again and again: Exchange and support in my wonderfully valuable grown network!
What do you recommend to applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
What are your professional milestones?
Learned from many mistakes during the co-founding of Mobisol, developed research competence during my dissertation on service design in the Global South, and I am preferably in the office since I have been organizing my own day as a freelance consultant.
What is your most defining career experience?
The summer of 2011, when seven of us created a functioning prototype from a mock-up of our idea in a suitcase within 5 months and convinced our first customer in Lolovono.
What do you recommend applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
Read the wikipedia entry on the impostor syndrome, take a deep breath in and out and just tell us about yourself.
What are your most important career stages?
What is your most formative career experience?
The termination of my corporate career. I had a great path ahead of me. From the outside, everything was perfect. Inside, I got a stomach ache and felt more and more strongly that I didn’t want to do this, especially in this environment. When you’re on the hamster wheel right now, it’s insanely hard to notice how stressful it is. When I drove home on my very last day, I sat in the car and realized how toxic the environment had been for me and what a downward spiral I was on. I am infinitely glad and grateful that I realized this for myself. Since then I know much better what I have to pay attention to in order to work in a way that fulfills me and does not rob me of my life energy.
What do you recommend to applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
Do your thing. Do it your way. And don’t let anyone tell you what to do. Regardless of whether you get into the program or not, you’ve got it! Find an environment for yourself where you can be the best version of yourself.
Building Networks
What are your most important professional stations?
What is your most defining career experience?
I don’t think there is “one experience” in my career, but a long and gradual process of gaining knowledge, mainly about myself. A very formative moment was deciding not to do a PhD; I realized that I was not made for the typical science career, which was painful but also liberating. Likewise, the decision to become self-employed, something I never wanted; but again, I saw that this is the way of working that suits me best. Perhaps my most formative career experience is precisely the lack of one: because we define ourselves what career means to us, and therefore there can never be a prescribed, “right” path, but a string of choices that are right at that moment.
What do you recommend to female applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Program?
What are your professional milestones?
Chartered engineer who worked her way up to Assistant Chief Engineer before diversifying into Sales and Commercial & Programs before leaving the industry & becoming a certified coach. I have my own B-Corp certified coaching business & have recently founded the not-for-profit Womxn in Climate Tech & Innovation to take action towards creating a new leadership paradigm in the Climate Tech & Innovation eco-system.
What is your most defining career experience?
Walking away from the industry after going through burnout with no clear plan before deciding to pivot into coaching. I went from being a leader who coached to a coach who leads.
What do you recommend to applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
Discover what makes you unique & then harness this power to design the life you want to create. If something is not working for you, boldly redesign your life to enable you to contribute to your full potential.
What are your most important career stages?
I graduated from Ecole Centrale de Lille as an engineer and I worked 10 years in the data field. The professional milestones are my graduation, my first job as a data scientist, being promoted to a manager role and then transitioning to being independent. Today, I am a freelancer data tech lead as well as a professional coach and diversity & inclusion consultant, guiding tech companies to close the gender gap.
What is your most defining career experience?
Many moments in my career have taught me so much and I’m always building on top of these learnings… The most defining moment would be when I decided to transition to being independent. This was a big jump for me and I had to learn (still learning!) new skills, and trust my ability to learn and adapt. It is very exciting!
What do you recommend to female applicants for the Femtec Career-Building Programme?
Go for it!! The first step of every move in your career is going to dare. Dare consider a certain path, dare apply, dare defend your skills in front of others and dare say yes to opportunities. Daring is not innate, like any other skills it requires training. So train yourself by daring every time you get the chance! The STEM world needs your inputs and you! The more and more women join forces in tech and STEM, the better it will be not only for women but for everyone.
