Independent consultant based in Zurich (polylingual, polymath)
I am a consultant and business partner independently working for clients in the greater Zurich area, and abroad. With experience in service strategy and service design, strategic sourcing, vendor governance and performance management from mostly financial services, I wish to build more expertise in life sciences. To that end, I invested in a master in healthcare management at ZHAW 2017-2019. Other sectors I was engaged in are automotive, transportation and high tech.
Originally Swedish and soon Swiss, I am fluent in Swedish, English, Italian, German and French, and I am still working on my Spanish. I like the mix of people and experiences one experience when being active in Europe, both privately and for work. If you read on, you can find out more about me as a person and how I see things.
Moving, in steps, from a Swedish island to the center of Zurich
I was born on a Swedish island and educated in Gothenburg. I have lived and worked across Europe and North America. Moving away started with the implementation of SAP R/3 at Volvo; that lead to me learning that I was an apt problem-solver and natural consultant. I have tried a few other professions, but I think I must have received the consultant gene.
Since 2011 I live in Zurich with my husband and son, born in 2008. Swiss nationality is around the corner, hopefully.
Discovering the world through systems integration
My career started at Volvo, which is near the island. Through one for the first global SAP implementations in 1997-1999, I had the chance to combine finance process design with software and business integration, which was fun. Such large R/3 implementations were rather few back then and there were many challenges of integration, one being to physically store information and consolidate into financial reporting. As a young professional, I remember learning about business process integration through the lens of the standardized ERP, and was early to understand the value of processes being as simple as possible. I learned that Headquarters does not always know what is best, and is not always right. I have especially fond memories of the Canadian subsidiary Prévost Car, and a year spent in Québec.
With me, complex system integration and collaboration issues were solved, and four of the Volvo Group’s manufacturing locations could integrate to the global platform.
Working across Europe, from Germany
Consulting at CSC Ploenzke and Accenture I did ERP and CRM systems integration and partnered with clients and partners (such as Siebel Systems), to create, implement and develop IT and software solutions. I held a multi-year relationship with a client for which we developed a customer interaction center. I moved out of my comfort zone of being an expert into being a business partner and, sometimes, leader of change.
I was active to develop practice areas in Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management, Sales Force Effectiveness and Strategic IT Effectiveness. My clients, in five European countries, were in the “Industrie & Handel” and “Products” sectors, which included logistics services, transportation, engineering, manufacturing, pharma sales, pharma production and consumer goods sales and merchandizing. I was happy to travel, as it made it possible to meet and stay connected with people throughout Europe.
Moving to Italy, for love
After meeting someone in Italy, I transferred with Accenture to Milan. Eventually I connected with McKinsey and started what would be many intense, challenging and rewarding years in the Business Technology Office. I immersed myself in banking, starting with a Post-Merger Management project and the Risk Management processes of an investment bank, and then created an IT and Operations Cross-Border Operating Model for a regional European bank.
With colleagues in the Operations practice I discovered the fun in working with Service Operations (in High Tech) and with Procurement (for a manufacturer). The service work took me through half a dozen additional countries which, together with motherhood, took its toll. We looked around Europe for a new home…
Settling in in Switzerland
…which was, luckily, Zurich!
My family of three quickly settled into this wonderful city, with its cryptical ques for disposing waste correctly and for finding out the acceptable level and volume of kid activity on a tram. We still enjoy everything it has, including clean air and very predictable communications (Gotthard and Gubrist tunnels included).
My professional reorientation first to Zurich Insurance and later to UBS was smooth, and I found that the drive and energy I thought had been imposed on me by others, when in consulting, actually came from within. I enjoy to take on activity, teams, challenges and uncertainty to work with customers, stakeholders and partners defining, aligning and improving services, which is what I do. I am drawn to problems that have existed for a while, that are important, and that involve capability-building in multiple corporate functions. I enjoy solving those “impossible” things, even if they sometimes need multiple iterations of efforts. To this day, I have not been out of ideas
Engaged in business, and life
I love to work and be active, and seek out places where I like to be and things I wish to do. When it happened that I had to re-assess my career, the decision fell on the health sector and a Swiss university. 2017 to 2019 I took a master in healthcare management and several courses in medicine, following strong personal interest. Health and well-being matter to me, and I am fascinated by the different systems at work around that. I aim to be more active in the life science and medical technology sectors, contributing to service strategy and design, performance management, sourcing and governance. Independent consulting is a way to go about it. So far I have made a business plan for a potential distributor of a new medical device in Switzerland, helped a Danish biotech get ready for commercialization of products in the US, helped several pharmaceuticals in procurement, vendor governance and financial performance management, and assessed product competitiveness in niche medicinal technology.
In our thirteenth year, third apartment and second Swiss city, it was time to try to become Swiss. It is my home and place of orientation.
