Achieve excellence
and leave a mark

The decision to leave Deutsche Telekom was one I made very consciously: Shortly after my 40th birthday, it became very clear that I would not be offered a new role within the group for the foreseeable future and was set to continue in my role as CFO of T-Mobile UK. With my desire for something unknown and "new," I let myself be approached and ultimately became the successful candidate for the role of Deputy Group CFO at the Australian telecom company Telstra in Melbourne. When I had the offer on the table, I became scared of my own boldness, leaving my familiar work environment and not only taking on responsibility at a much more prominent position in a new company, on a different continent, but also completely removing my family (now of four) from their established social environment to start anew at the other end of the world - without knowing what a return could look like. In the end, the decision was made after much struggle and several sleepless nights, but with full awareness and joyful anticipation of the new adventure in Australia. Telstra was a great experience, very challenging in every aspect, regular exposure to the public, the capital market, the media, along with new tasks such as the supervisory board function of the New Zealand mobile subsidiary. I was able to grow into a much larger role, learn to present myself externally, and help shape challenging management decisions in a large strategic context. Knowing the time limitation of my contract to 4 years, against the backdrop of organizational changes at Telstra, and not least for personal reasons, I began in 2011 with the conscious search for a new challenge in Europe, which was anything but easy. The new role I ultimately decided on after a long, arduous search brought us back to Vienna, and I was very happy that the adventure in Australia had come to such a good end. The new role as Group CFO of Semperit was the career highlight for me up to that point, an international corporate group, publicly listed, demanding shareholder structure, organizational, procedural, and technical challenges, etc. - all areas of a very challenging and simultaneously fulfilling, responsible CFO role had to be taken on and there wasn’t a day without learning on the job and new experiences, unfortunately, always also connected with much of my own uncertainty (which could not be shown), hesitancy, and reluctance (which was always interpreted as weakness) and not infrequently with resistances and adversities that made life as a senior executive and board member difficult and burdensome over long periods. When it came time to extend my second three-year contract in 2016 – I had just turned 50 – a not simple process of fundamental questioning of one's own actions began, striving for more clarity of one's own motivators, and exploring alternative actions. Anyone who has gone through this phase themselves knows only too well how infinitely arduous this process of reflection can be, in which one is grateful for any support, for every constructive reflection, and critical discussion of one's own positions.