I joined Hilti in 2002 as an intern in Corporate Reaserch in Liechtenstein, as part of an international university programme, Unitech, aiming at providing international business experiences to engineering students. I immediately liked the company, its care about people and passion for innovation and continuous improvements. Additionally, it was widely international and operating within my area of university studies, the construction industry. 

Being my ambition the possibility to make business sense out of my technical education, I found the company a perfect fit and I decided to start my full-time employment as an Account Manager, in order to gather insights about the company’s customers, products and processes. Since then, the company has continuously given me new opportunities to develop my professional and personal skills, each time complementing my previous experiences and always stretching myself with new tasks and challenges. Jobs and locations have changed often, the people- and result-oriented oriented working atmosphere have remained constant. Over time, my focus and ambition has also developed, from being content-driven on specific functional matters, to being rather people-driven, devoting the biggest part of my time and energy to support and develop the colleagues within my area of influence, trying to inspire them to live their ambitions and contributing at their best to the success of our organization and our customers. Greatly motivated people deliver great customer value: at Hilti we do not only say it, we live it every day.

Hilti came to my college campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma, recruiting for a newly created internship where high-potential candidates would rotate through the organization in sales, marketing and corporate. I got up extremely early that day to be one of the first to sign up! This company was global and had a great reputation as being an exceptional employer.
 
After a very involved process of interviews, testing and company tours, I was selected for the program and immediately felt that this was where I wanted my career to begin. I’d learned about Hilti in my studies, so I knew it had all the makings of a great business. 
 
I was honoured to be chosen as Hilti’s first hire out of the internship, and spent my early years in various progressively responsible roles in HR. Here I quickly learned the importance of how “happy team members helps our company make happy customers”.
 
When my vice president asked me what I saw myself doing with our company in the future, I said I wanted to share what I’d learned in North America by taking our cultural initiative into other market organizations. There began my international dream, with a role as head of HR for the UK.
 
Our company soon embraced a global approach that all our team members should be on a culture journey. “Our Culture Journey” was born and I was asked to return to North America to head up this new function as its first Chief Spirit Sherpa, otherwise known as director of organizational development. It’s a role I’ve loved from the day I started…and I’ll soon be in my fifteenth year of sherpa-ing!