What I stand for

Empowerment. It is my big passion to help people grow and uncover their motivational drivers. I base this on three pillars:

  1. Caring personally.
  2. Guaranteeing an environment of psychological safety.
  3. Fostering autonomy and ownership.

Throughout my career, I supported many colleagues in taking the next step. This is what I am most proud of.

Standing together. I am a firm believer in diversity. Best ideas spark when people of different backgrounds and perspectives work together. I promote equity and make sure that everybody is fairly treated.

Candor. Giving and demanding direct feedback is the base for a trustful and empowering relationship. I foster this practice within my teams as everybody benefits from it: My peers speak up and are honest to each other, while I provide them continuous guidance and an understanding of their performance. It’s never been more fun to drive results.

Integrity. I hold my promises and I adhere to my values. I express my intentions openly, make plans and strategies explicit, and I strive for long-term relationships where all sides can benefit from. When I make a mistake, I will take the responsibility and apologize.

My story

My career started in my childhood: I wanted to live inside my computer and figure out how everything worked. My curiosity and interest touched everything related to tech from electronics like the 230/115 volt switch on the back of my computer (ouch!) over hardware to software. When I got access to the internet, I connected with like-minded people immediately. I spent every day and night learning to code.

When I was fifteen, I started my own business and started to monetize my hobby while still in school. This was the ultimate growth accelerator: negotiating contracts, filing taxes, managing my time, and being accountable for my actions. All of these skills quickly became a part of my repertoire.

On the day of my graduation, I got a call from a headhunter, hiring for a project on which they urgently needed someone with my technical focus. It was a perfect chance to jump into my first full-time role, and this coincidence marked the beginning of my professional career.

I quickly realized how much I loved to troubleshoot complex bugs and to delve into legacy systems, a skill my co-workers always appreciated. This turned out to be the perfect foundation for learning a lot in my field every day. I often ended up working across engineering teams, supporting peers in many different areas as needed. Today, one might call this role a “Staff Engineer”.

My first CTO role was offered to me following the restructuring of a company I was working for. It was a huge challenge: the team had been cut down drastically, and my fellow engineers were more than skeptical about the company’s leadership and future. I had to work hands-on with the platform as I attempted to stabilize our self-hosted platform with disks which would randomly turn read-only (what a fun! ha!). All the while, I did my best to build up trust with my team.

It was through this experience that I realized: I love people leadership and strategy work.

Long story short, in 2016, I co-founded Solvemate, a SaaS for customer service automation. I was leading tech and product there until we were acquired by Dixa in 2022.

Running my own company and growing with the CTO role has been the most impactful experience of my career so far. I am especially grateful for all the people I have met and learned from throughout the process.

Read the full story here.