Looking back more than a decade after graduating from GBS, what moments stand out as the biggest turning points in your career, and how did your MBA contribute to them?

When I look back, GBS was not just an academic milestone. It became a platform from which I could decide the next decade of my career. The MBA gave me exposure, confidence, and opportunities I might not have accessed otherwise. Internships and roles opened doors in banking, retail, telecom, and consulting, helping me start my strategy consulting career in Frankfurt. It sharpened my passion for solving business problems and connecting technology with strategy, value, and execution.

As my career progressed, I worked across technology, process improvement, innovation management, strategy, and M&A. I was no longer asking only, “Can we deliver this?” but also, “Does this create value, can the organization absorb it, and is this the right strategic move?” In one intense year, you do not learn everything. You learn how to learn quickly, apply fundamentals, and connect the dots. The cohort challenged me. The MBA did not give me a fixed path. It gave me a foundation and the courage to build one.

Today, you advise C-level executives, boards, and investors on AI, strategy, and transformation. How did your professional journey evolve from MBA graduate to a trusted advisor in such high-impact decision-making?

Advisory work is a slowly brewed skill. There is no shortcut to it. You build it through strategy, execution, transformation, technology, operations, innovation, entrepreneurship, and failure. Success gives confidence, but failure gives depth, if you are willing to reflect and unlearn. Over time, I became interested in the missing layer between strategy and execution. Leaders rarely struggle because they lack intelligence or ambition. More often, the problem is framed at the wrong level, decision rights are unclear, or the operating model cannot absorb the change.

Today, based in Luxembourg, I advise leaders and organizations through D-Journey Advisory. My role is to separate signal from noise: what decision are we making, what value are we creating, and what should we avoid because it sounds trendy? Trust comes from experience, honesty, reflection, and seeing the real problem, not just the visible.

AI is reshaping industries at an incredible pace. From your perspective, what separates organizations that successfully turn AI into business value from those that struggle?

Organizations that create value from AI usually do not start with AI. They start with the work. They ask where decisions are slow, where knowledge is trapped, where errors are expensive, and where better intelligence can change outcomes. Organizations that struggle often start with tools: pilots, platforms, excitement, then wonder why value does not scale. Sometimes the pilot works technically, but the business remains unchanged. Workflow, trust, accountability, and readiness stay the same.

For me, successful AI adoption depends on clarity of business problem, process understanding, data readiness, governance, accountability, and human judgment. Leaders should be cautious with agent hype. More agents do not automatically add value. AI creates value when viewed as a business and operating model issue, not just technology deployment.

Throughout your career, you've worked across industries, countries, and complex transformation projects. Which experiences have had the greatest influence on the way you approach leadership and strategic decision-making today?

Working across industries taught me that every sector has its own logic. Manufacturing influenced me strongly because in operations, reality is clear. Either the process works or not, people use the system or not, and the value appears or remains a promise. You cannot hide behind abstract strategy language for long. Transformation taught me that many failures begin as decision failures dressed up as alignment. People agree in the room, but the real tensions remain outside the conversation. Entrepreneurship taught me to make choices with incomplete information and balance speed with judgment.

My doctoral work in SpaceTech taught me to look beyond capability. A technology can be impressive and still not become a market. The key question is whether the ecosystem can convert capability into customers, capital, contracts, and growth. Today, my approach is simple: understand the system, name the real problem, do not confuse activity with progress, make the decision clear, and keep learning while executing.

Looking back at your time at Goethe Business School, were there any courses, experiences, or connections that unexpectedly proved valuable years later in your career?

Yes, but not always in the way I expected. Courses in strategy, finance, organizational behavior, entrepreneurship, and management broadened my business language. Earlier, I viewed problems mainly from a technology angle. The MBA taught me to consider strategic, economic, risk, organizational, and people factors.

Case discussions helped me think quickly, but diverse perspectives were most valuable. Different backgrounds led to different interpretations, training me to respect context. The unexpected value of GBS was not one course. It was the ability to combine perspectives.

Many professionals hesitate before pursuing an MBA because they're unsure whether the investment will truly pay off. Based on your own experience, how has your MBA influenced your career over the past 10+ years?

For me, the MBA paid off over time, not as one immediate jump, but as a foundation. It helped me move from specialist to broader business leader. At some stage, technical competence is not enough. You need to understand value, capital, people, strategy, risk, incentives, and execution.

The MBA gave me confidence to ask questions, challenge assumptions, understand trade-offs, and contribute when the answer was not obvious. Some value appeared quickly through knowledge, exposure, and network. Some appeared much later, in senior executive discussions where I realized that the way of thinking had stayed with me.

If you could go back and give one piece of advice to yourself on your very first day at Goethe Business School, what would it be, and what would you tell professionals who are considering taking that same step today?

I would tell myself: do not rush to define too quickly what this MBA should make you. At the beginning, it is natural to think in terms of role, title, salary, or the next career move. Those things matter. But the deeper value is in how the MBA changes the way you think, listen, decide, and stay calm when the answer is not obvious.

To professionals considering an MBA today, I would say: do it for the right reason. Do not expect the degree to transform your career automatically. Do it if you are ready to invest in yourself, challenge your thinking, build relationships, and connect learning with choices. An MBA should not only help you reach the next step. It should help you become capable of taking many steps after that.