Sabine Scheunert’s big career breakthrough came when her son had just turned 1 and she got a call from Citroën, asking her if she wanted to move to China as the first female CEO of an OEM there. She said yes. “It gave me a lot of empowerment, a lot of trust,” she told me in this podcast. „I really tried to feel as empowered, as positive in my personal life. And you know that a baby is not as easy to steer and to manage as most probably a lot of big projects!”

She has been juggling parenting her son and managing her incredibly successful career ever since. She’s now VP at Mercedes-Benz, running Digital & IT sales and marketing globally. At the same time, I love how she says that her parental leave was “never-ending, because I will be always the mother of my son. And since he is born I try to combine family and career in the most positive way that I can.”

Now an executive herself, she tries to support women in the technology sector. Role models help, she says. She strongly believes that a bigger focus on digital education in Germany would help too. But there are also things that we can all do: 

⭐️ if you’re a parent – know that parenthood has boosted your skillset, have confidence, and go for those leadership positions! 

⭐️ if you’re a manger – don’t be afraid to recruit new parents into leadership positions. Sabine says that taking that CEO position even though „combining private life and career was clearly a particular challenge at that time, was one of the best decisions.” 

👉 At MyCollective we keep hearing this: that a big career opportunity during or right after parental leave can really be life-changing – and it’s something that parents will still tell us about years later, as an example of how supportive their management was. 

Either way, go for it! 🙌

Speaker: Sabine Scheunert, VP Digital & IT Sales/Marketing @Mercedes-Benz Cars 

Sabine is not speaking on behalf of Mercedes-Benz in this podcast and all opinions are her own.  

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Sabine Scheunert / Mercedes-Benz

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

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“After women, people with disability are the biggest minority.”

D&I – diversity & inclusion – suddenly seems to be on everyone’s agenda. At MyCollective, our focus is often on the diversity part – but in disability activist, founder and public figure Raúl Krauthausen argues that what we should all be focusing on is inclusion, in the broadest possible sense.

“D&I actually used to just be called ‘inclusion’”, he tells me in this podcast. “And inclusion is essentially the acceptance and management of human diversity. It’s not something you can tick off a checklist – but something that develops over time. So we have to keep fighting for everyone to be thought of and remembered.” 

For him, the cause of feminism – so central to our conversations about diversity – illustrates this perfectly: over 100 years after women fought for and won the right to vote, there still isn’t adequate female representation in our businesses or political leadership. “It’s never over,” he says. “The further we come in the debate, the more injustices we uncover. 100 years lie between the female right to vote and today’s discussion about female quotas. Inclusion isn’t something passive. It means that someone with a disability can be the CEO.” 

As founder of Sozialhelden, he lobbies for legislation to make this happen. It’s about removing barriers – both in the physical and in the metaphorical sense. With Sozialhelden, he developed “a kind of google maps for people in wheelchairs” – WheelMap – one of many examples that show how disability (or just a diversity of needs in general) can drive innovation: “Alexa, Siri, Kindle, the electric toothbrush – these are all inventions made with disability in mind. There’s huge innovation potential around creating access for people. We need to stop seeing disability as a deficit – it’s also a chance for a different perspective on the world.” ❤️

For companies who want to remove barriers and create more opportunities for different-abled people, he has some excellent advice (which incidentally works for anyone wanting to include more people from any kind of minority!): 

👉 create job ads in a way that are more inclusive. Stop using language that might exclude certain groups and discourage them from applying. 

👉 consider hiring for diversity and then providing training to get everyone up to standard. Those trainings are useful for everyone, he says: “We ask everyone, regardless of whether or not they have a disability, the same question: how can we remove barriers in your place of work? People always come back with a lot of ideas!” 

I learned so much from and was so inspired by this conversation with Raúl that I can only encourage you to listen to it too (it’s in German) – and we’d love to hear from you too – what are your ideas to break down barriers? 

Speaker: Raúl Krauthausen, Activist for Inclusion & Founder @SozialHelden 

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Anna Spindelndreier / Raul Krauthausen 

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

What if you could take an established business and transform it into exactly the kind of company that you would like to work in?

As CEO of the Swiss company Trisport AG, Melanie Lauer was able to do just that when her company acquired the sporting goods brand Kettler.

Many of us will remember Kettler as the name on most of the sports gear of our childhoods – but although it’s an old and well-known company, the business behind it was rebuilt from scratch when Trisport acquired it: “it was like a start-up,” Melanie told me in this podcast. 

A mother and CEO herself, she knew what she had to do to build a solid workforce and retain those talents in times of labour scarcity: “Flexibility, in every way!“

A lot of businesses offer some flexibility, but then their approach to that flexibility is somewhat… inflexible. So if you’re on an 80% model and take Fridays off (as an example), there’s often zero room to manoeuvre within that model. At every conference and business event I go to, I also keep hearing CEOs and heads of HR departments talk about wanting to get people back into the office – so the old ideal of having people sit at their desks at work remains alive and well.

And yet having flexibility in where and how you work is incredibly attractive for anyone – not just parents. So I was all the more inspired by Melanie’s approach. At Kettler, flexible work isn’t just a daily or weekly adjustment of working hours – it’s geographic, it’s seasonal – it’s personal. 

“I’ve got one colleague who moved to Spain because he thought Spain might be a nice country to live in,” she says. „We offer sabbaticals. And we have a seasonal business, so a lot of colleagues work overtime in the winter and then work less in the summertime. It helps everybody. And it helps us to keep the loyalty of the people. They really want to stay with the company because there are benefits that they do not have somewhere else.” 

Speaker: Melanie Lauer, CEO @Trisport AG

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Melanie Lauer 

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

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For many parents, returning to work after having a baby is the first – and biggest – hurdle to staying in a career. What can really help is knowing the possibilities, and having the transparent conversations that you need to have at work and at home so that both you and your team can plan ahead for your re-entry. 

In this podcast, lawyer, author and entrepreneur Sandra Runge takes us through some of the options, starting with her own experience as a cautionary tale: when she came back to her job as head of a legal department 10 years ago, she found an empty office where her computer had been, was told that her role had been outsourced, handed her notice and sent home. Although she was devastated at the time, she says now that the experience changed her life for the better. 

Today, she gives legal and professional advice to parents who want to return to work; she has set up kindergartens to provide childcare solutions for working parents; she runs campaigns for better legal frameworks as the co-founder of ProParents; and she has written a celebrated book – „Glückwunsch zum Baby, sie sind gefeuert!” – or “Congratulations on your baby, you’re fired!“

This podcast is full of invaluable advice for parents returning to work, including:

⭐️ Communicate! „Communication is one of the most important parts of a strategy coming back to work,” says Sandra. „Look for a conversation, ask for a meeting, come by when the baby is born, participate in activities of the company like a training day, or a summer party or Christmas party of whatever. Keep in contact with colleagues – and from time to time talk to your employer to ask for updates. I know you are in this baby bubble and it’s not always easy to go there – but it’s really good to be active and to show your face.” For employers, it’s a good idea to check in with your parental leavers from time to time.

⭐️ Be bold. “Ask for an onboarding after your parental leave,” suggests Sandra, so that you know „what will happen when you come back.” She suggests asking for a mentor too – it would benefit both you and your company. 

⭐️ Cover your legal bases and put any important decisions on the record: „When you have meetings and your manager is saying part-time is no problem, fix it in a written form.“

⭐️ Be a role model. Family-friendly companies don’t necessarily need to make a big financial investment, says Sandra: „it’s more the mindset – that there are role models, managers in a higher position that work part time, fathers that work part time – that this is really the real life that is lived in the company.” You are a part of that!

Whatever your company’s policies, everyone can be proactive about removing those initial hurdles. If we all do it, we can change the narrative around parental leave and working parents, together ❤️

Speaker: Sandra Runge – lawyer, author, entrepreneur

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Manu Wolf / Sandra Runge

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

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Although during your parental leave you’ll be focused on spending time with your baby, this is also an excellent time to check your finances, says Astrid Zehbe.

The journalist and mother of two has always had an interest in female finances, and she turned that into a career during her own parental leave, when she co-founded the magazine Courage to cover female careers, finance and wellbeing. Today, she is editor in chief at finanzielle, a finance magazine for women published by Emotion Magazine.

In this podcast, she shares a wealth of knowledge and advice on things that we can do now – particularly if we are on parental leave – to ensure that we are financially independent later in life. Parental leave is a great time to do this for two reasons (and it’s not because you have time off, because we all know that’s not true!) 

⭐️ there’s a new urgency to ensure that our finances are in order because there’s an extra person in the family;

⭐️ any decision that we make to work less after our parental leave ends will result in a pay-gap and later a pension-gap. So it’s really important to plan for the financial  consequences when making those decisions now. 

Of course, she has solutions to offer. And she also recommends investing for our children now, not later: „They have a very long investing horizon,” she says, „so you can invest very risky because it’s such a long time – so I would just start right away.” 

But, as they say in the airplane, remember to put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others! By securing your own financial future, you are of course also helping your children, because you won’t be a financial burden on them later.

And of course, talk to your partner and make sure you are on the same page 💕

What are you doing to prepare for the time after your parental leave when it comes to finances? How have you and your partner addressed the pay-gap and pension-gap of the parent who is taking on more care work? 

Speaker: Astrid Zehbe, Editor in Chief @finanzielle Magazine @emotion

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Markus Witte / Astrid Zehbe

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

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