Women on the Board – an interview with Mariel von Schumann on being a board member while juggling a full-time job and parenthood. 

Mariel von Schumann was a full-time executive at Siemens and a working mother when she decided to take on an additional role as a board member – first within Siemens, and then outside the company. 

Crazy as that sounds, it’s something that she would actually recommend to all of us: “At some point in your career you have enough experience to be able to add value to other companies,” she says in today’s podcast, adding that that experience becomes an important value-add for yourself and even the company you already work for, too, “because in any negotiation, it always helps to understand where your counterpart is coming from.”

With a career spanning 20 years and the courage to make decisions that sometimes went against the grain, she has plenty of other advice for us too – from how to get those board positions, to how and when to take our parental leave, to managing our finances (to pick up from where last week’s podcast left off!) 

Speaker: Mariel von Schumann, Board Member at Siemens Gamesa, Verti Insurance 

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #femaleleadership #femalemoney #womeninmanagement #managers #boardmembers #womenchangemakers #womenleaders #diversity #valueadd #workingparents #parentalleave #getinspiredpodcast #parenthood

Changing cultures: bold moves towards gender equality with Škoda’s Board Member for „People & Culture“ Maren Gräf 

You hear a lot of people saying “walk the talk” but hardly anyone takes it as seriously as Maren. For some months last year, she engineered a shift at Skoda by focusing on hiring women. “After 126 years of automotive tradition and a workforce that was 80% men and 20% women, we decided from now on to focus on hiring women, of course based on equal qualifications… to correspond to the distribution in the population, which is 50-50,” she says. 

Gräf knows that it will take time to achieve true balance – and she has also faced criticism: “I got a lot of questions – why we now discriminate against men – whether women are at all interested in technical jobs or do they really want to go into management – all of this came up. I think the important thing is to explain again and again that this is all part of a healthy transformation in the industry.”

This is why we @MyCollective have also started talking to people within companies who are left behind when their talents go on parental leave. Once they see the value of having people in their team returning after parental leave with new skills – the transformation in the industry that Maren talks about in this podcast – we will be a big step ahead. It’s all about #ChangingTheNarrative! 

Speaker: Maren Gräf, Member of the Board, People & Culture Škoda.

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Maren Gräf

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #culturalchange #genderimbalance #genderbalance #equitableworkplace #womenchangemakers #inspiringwomen #womenleaders #womenontheboard #femaleempowerment #diversity #parentalleave #getinspiredpodcast #parenthood

Financial Spring-Clean – Using you investments to make a difference with Katja Ruhnke

Katja Ruhnke co-founded and runs CK Venture Capital, which specifically represents impact startups. She says that this kind of investing won’t just affect your finances, but also your career – while making a positive impact on the world that we live in.

„You learn about entrepreneurial skills, because you work with founders at a very early stage,” she explains. „And that’s what for me is so interesting. You learn so much outside of your box, outside of your comfort zone. It gives you new ideas and innovation.”

She’s big on gender balance too, focusing on female-led startups to help counter the fact that only 16% of business founders in Germany are women. „Men invest in men,” she says. „So we need women to invest in women.“

If you want in, you don’t need to invest huge amounts to become a #BusinessAngel. Her recently published book, Female Money, explains that you can start small and that you can contribute more than just money to the businesses that you invest in: they will value your know-how and experience too. We talk about this – and more – in our latest podcast.

Speaker: Katja Ruhnke, Co-Founder & CEO CK Ventures.

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Picture: Katja Ruhnke

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #femalefinance #femalemoney #femaleinvestor #angelinvestment #womenchangemakers #womenleaders #femaleempowerment #impact #purpose #parentalleave #WomeninFinance #invest #InvestmentGap #ClosetheInvestmentGap #getinspiredpodcast #parenthood #financialspringclean

Financial Spring-Clean – Crypto and Blockchain 

If you’ve ever wondered about investing in crypto, listening to Elisa Spiess is a brilliant place to start. As part of our financial spring-clean series, she provides a fun and informative insight into #cryptocurrencies and #blockchain in today’s podcast. 

Elisa’s interest in cryptocurrencies started 8 years ago, and as it grew, she turned it into a business, holding training sessions targeted at women. “Often, I was the only woman in the room,” she says. “ All the people I knew that actually made money with crypto were men. It doesn’t have to be like that. When I started my business, all my friends were like, ‘Now I can actually understand it!’”

Although we can’t give you investment advice, it makes sense for all of us to find out more about #crypto and make up our own minds. “We’re still at the very beginning,” Elisa says. “There have already been humungous gains for a lot of people, but the industry is growing. Every day, every week there is news about the industry, about acceptance from banks, from governments.” 

Speaker: Elisa Spiess, Founder @Femme Capital 

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Photograph: Elisa Spiess

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #femalefinance #femalemoney #womenchangemakers #womenleaders #impact #purpose #parentalleave #WomeninFinance #invest #InvestmentGap #ClosetheInvestmentGap #getinspiredpodcast #parenthood #financialspringclean

Germans are great at saving money. But put our savings habits into a gender context, and it no longer looks so great. It turns out that women lag far behind men when it comes to actually investing their savings, with only 13% of German women owning any stock at all. Why?

To begin with, women simply earn less than men – Germany has one of the worst pay-gaps between genders in Europe, at 18-20% – so women have less savings to invest in the first place. 

By not investing any savings that they do have, women end up with significantly less to retire on – so Germany’s pay-gap spirals first to an investment gap and then into a retirement gap at the later part of life.  Let’s not forget that women live on average 5-7 years longer than men…

Add to this the fact that women are not only more likely to accept a drop in income to care for children and elderly relatives than their male counterparts, but also that they also do a full hour and a half more of unpaid work every day than men do. You’re looking at an enormous financial imbalance that urgently needs addressing. 

Andrea Fernandez is a Harvard Business School graduate who has worked in finance for many years at JPMorgan, Allianz Global Investors, and Liqid. During her parental leave she came up with the idea for Vitamin, an app that helps women take finances in their own hands and start investing. 

In our latest podcast, she calls on all women to start investing – no matter with what amount. She argues that even 100 Euros monthly can grow into a retirement fund, if you start early enough! 

So let’s close those gaps and start putting our money to work 💪💶

Speaker: Andrea Fernandez, Founder of Vitamin

Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier – Founder @MyCollective

Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach

Photograph: Andrea Fernandez 

Graphic & Production: MyCollective

#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #FemaleFinance #WomeninFinance #Invest #PayGap #ClosethePayGap #InvestmentGap #RetirementGap #getinspiredpodcast #womenchangemakers #womenleaders #parenthood