Born in Germany, he studied economics, business and social sciences at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. His doctoral thesis, also at St. Gallen, addressed new styles of individual and organizational leadership (“Führungspersönlichkeit”), with a particular focus on personality development.
In his young adulthood, he began exploring the world, extensively – initially, during his university years, with internships in Mexico-City, Buenos Aires, Singapore, Paris and New York. It is during those years that his understanding of the rich cultural diversity of our planet began to strike him as an incredible treasure and a key to the healthy development of humankind. He began work life in International Investment Banking in Frankfurt, and then in Media & Communication with the media giant Bertelsmann in London. From there He moved to Singapore where he co-founded and built up First Asia Publishing into a leading special-interest publisher. In 2002, his co-founder and himself decided to sell the company to a Chinese media conglomerate, as he increasingly felt a need to participate in addressing the transformative challenges of our time.
From this point onwards, he pursued his passion of bringing about transformation in the economic, social, cultural and spiritual sphere. Together with Ronnie, they established the Trans4m Center for Integral Development in 2006.
In addition to co-creating a new integral knowledge and practice foundation, another particular interest of his is to bring out and work with the uniqueness of each person, each context, and each culture. Driven by the guiding image of “unity in diversity”, he continuously seek for the most transformative educational space to nurture the full potential of participants, their communities and organisations. Education, to him, is hence not a means in itself. Rather, education needs to be related to the potentials and challenges that we encounter, locally and globally. Its role is to stimulate continuous personal and collective transformation in service of sustainable livelihood, as well as sustainable organisational, community and societal development.
In that spirit, he developed and teaches integral curricula in international development, organisational and societal transformation, and culturally and spiritually conscious leadership. He leads courses at universities around the world, including St. Gallen University (Switzerland), University of Johannesburg (South Africa), Hope University (UK), Heliopolis University for Sustainable Development (Egypt), and Meridian University (USA). He holds visiting professorships at the University of Staffordshire in the UK and with Da Vinci Institute in South Africa, in addition to an honorary professorship with Liverpool’s Hope University in the UK.
