One such success story is that of Dr. Anabel Ternès, Digital & Social Entrepreneur, International Business Administration Professorship majoring Communication Management, several years experience in speaking, coaching and management positions in international companies.
Anabel Ternès von Hattburg is a multiple entrepreneur, supervisory and advisory board member, member of the board of directors and board of trustees, professor and head of studies at the SRH Berlin, author, speaker and mother. She gives lectures on the future topics of HR management, leadership and digital communication. Anabel Ternès is an author among others for Impulse, Focus Online and t3n.
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1. Tell us about yourself and your entrepreneurial/corporate journey in Germany and your experience so far.
I am an aesthete, I love beautiful coherent and creative things, designs, arrangements and constructions and I like to take my time for it. However, I am also very fast and well-structured when it comes to analytical things. Both together result in a good synergy that quickly turns ideas into viable reality with lean management. The mixture may have something to do with the fact that I started playing the piano at an early age – virtuosity also needs the two poles of technical analytical perfection and creative playful freedom.
I have always had ideas about solving problems, tackling challenges, developing new products and services, and I have always wanted not only to make money, but first and foremost to create a sustainable impact with what I do. I am interested in many things, from good design to efficient energy storage, from compelling smart city solutions to innovative fintech ideas. That is how I ended up founding several companies in different industries, always where I had a solution to a challenge that I wanted to develop. For me, it is always about a solution that sustainably improves the current state, conserves resources and contributes to a world worth living in. Anyone who thinks that this is solely altruistic is mistaken. Doing something to ensure that we live in the kind of world we want for ourselves and our children and grandchildren is first and foremost about vision and self-care. After founding companies abroad in the energy, social, investment and consulting sectors, I started ventures in Germany, in the logistics, health and education sectors. From CoCarrier, the crowdshipping provider, HealthMedo, the international platform provider in the healthcare sector, and GetYourWings, the learning space for future shapers, I am still active in the latter as one of two CEOs. I have sold my shares in all the others.
2. Tell us more about SRH, and your ventures GetYourWings GmbH, Perspective? And your journey from supporting education and health
My employer SRH is a great company with a very special history. Founded out of the Protestant church with an offer for war-disabled people, the foundation has since developed into one of the largest private health care providers in Germany, which also attracts attention in the field of education. With more than 12 universities, several technical and general schools, kindergartens, rehabilitation facilities and hospitals, SRH is positioned in the industries of the future. For an organization with approximately 15,000 employees, SRH develops contemporary ideas, such as the CORE principle, a reformed project management principle that ensures highly self-determined, practical, efficient work at the universities. Developing new products in health and education here is both challenging and fulfilling.
GetYourWings is a non-profit organization that gives analog and digital, virtual and on-site workshops, and events at schools nationwide, where students learn to develop personal, social, digital, and media skills – and all kinds of future skills at large. From preparing food together to programming, it is always about perceiving the world with all our senses, recognizing and developing our own potential, and dealing with the world around us in a resource- and value-oriented way. If you want to find out more about this, you will find in-depth information on our website and in our publications, from children’s cookbooks to teachers’ manuals.
At Perspektive Z, the Future Academy, we are currently working on new forms of learning in order to convey STEM topics in an understandable and attractive way. We are developing new methods for parents to support their children with less energy and stress when they have to teach themselves the subject matter from home, largely independently and without a teacher or classmates.
Education has actually always been a red rag for me. I never liked school and skipped it when I could. I didn’t like the uncreative imparting of knowledge at all, I felt squeezed into a too tight corset and found it a pity that so much exciting content was taught in such an uncritical and boring way. From this aversion, I became involved during my studies and afterwards again and again with projects at schools to make school more exciting. I never thought that I would become professionally involved in this. On the subject of health, it was already clearer to me. From the situation where I myself was looking for the best doctors, treatments and methods to get myself fit again, it was only a short way to dealing with this topic professionally as well, and really comprehensively.
Through my professional activities, I am not only a trained optician, but also an auditor for corporate health management. Both have benefited me in my jobs, because I’ve always known what I am talking about. For example, because I have conducted optics workshop myself, taken inventory of stock and sold glasses. When it comes to health, I can also grasp issues and find solutions more authentically because I have already experienced some of the situations myself.
3. What made you run? What are the challenges that you would like to make an impact on?
We are living in an exciting time in which we have so many opportunities because of, not despite the many challenges we are facing. Now it is time to move on from discussion and reflection to action. Like a magnifying glass, Covid has put an unmistakable emphasis on many of the problems we have been facing for a long time – first and foremost health, followed by education, digitization, administration, but also law, research, mobility, energy, and many other areas.
As a mother, I see even more how important it is to give children the right education; as a boss, I see how important lifelong training is for employees of all ages, with all the future skills that include personal, social, digital and media skills.
In many areas, I am committed to health. Especially in this particular period, I notice how many people struggle with depression. And it is not just the elderly who get into mental imbalance, but children as well. Mental health is of particular concern to me, for the individual, but also in the context of corporate health management as a task for companies. In the area of health in particular, there is so much that can be changed for the better, elements that are currently working either sluggishly or not at all – starting with digital patient files, a digital information system that could, for example, have been very helpful for vaccinations, hygiene in hospitals, cooperation between conventional and alternative medicine, and ending with the treatment of symptoms instead of causes and curative instead of sufficiently preventive measures, especially in the case of chronic conditions.
Overall, Covid has also shown us what is fundamentally important, and that is worth a challenge of its own: fair and respectful interaction with one another. This is why I am a member of the Stiftung Zukunft Berlin and am involved in the FAIR REDEN competition, which promotes fair interaction, respect in communication and appreciation of diversity and otherness, even if it’s only a matter of diversity of opinion.
4. 5 women leaders who inspire you and why?
Oprah Winfrey: She just has so much positive power and a great presence. She is clear, creative, has never let anyone shut her up. For me, Oprah Winfrey stands for the absolute self-made woman, top businesswoman. She convinces by being herself, does not need her skin color or her womanhood – Oprah is simply herself.
Michelle Obama: She is a mother, a businesswoman – and a First Lady who has always stood up for herself, before, during and after her husband’s presidency. For me, Michelle Obama combines the qualities of clarity, sincerity, femininity, presence, and wisdom.
Madeleine Albright: I see her in front of me as if it were yesterday at one of the last conferences before Covid – a small woman, but energetic and powerful in her walk. She takes a stand with her words; her sentences are intelligent and clear. With her, you know she has been through a lot and taken the best from it: a cosmopolitan through and through, women’s networker, mother, professor, world leader.
Jacinda Ardern: A prime minister who wisely and prudently steered her country through the pandemic, a mother who took her child to the chairs of political bodies, a wife who knows how to separate private life and work, structured, natural, deliberate. With her consistent and swift action, she has already managed several challenges with aplomb, including, for example, the consequences of the Christchurch attack.
Margrethe Vestager: The EU’s Digital Commissioner always has a soothing effect on me. She appears alert, clear, fearless, calm, tough and tidy. She stands up for herself and her ideas, takes a clear stance against U.S. tech companies that run counter to European values, without losing her charming manner. Authenticity and determination paired with EQ and IQ.
5. What is your International Women's Day message?
Let us be ourselves, authentic, and unleash our potentials.
Let us support each other – power woman instead of cruel mother, opportunities instead of problems.
Let us head forward together instead of kicking backward on ourselves.