Since May 2022, I am working part-time at McKinsey & Company in IT Solution Advisory. Besides being the first line of defense for any questions and problems regarding the office's IT infrastructure, my role also serves as some sort of mediator between the remote global help desk colleagues and the users in the local office. Hence, besides deepening my understanding of troubleshooting hard- & software issues, I'm also learning a lot about effective communication and prioritization.

As a globally operating firm, McKinsey's work environment and culture is very international and diverse which makes being able to switch instantly from German to English and vice versa a must have skill. Also, up until now, I have always felt much appreciated and recognized - even in my small role as a working student.

To be frank, with its many employee perks & goodies, firm events, continuous learning and development opportunities, as well as one of the most beautiful terraces in the whole city, McKinsey has set the bar very high for any potential future employer.

In November 2021, my personal website went live. Born from the idea of simply documenting my coding adventures and noting down best practices and learnings for myself, it soon developed into writing detailed articles with full code examples to give back to the community and share free educational resources with everyone interested in quantitative finance and algorithmic trading. Planning, researching and posting content has since become an enjoyable hobby of mine and I'm looking forward to many more articles to come.

In June 2021, I successfully passed the written & oral examination of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Munich and Upper Bavaria for the Financial Investment Specialist certification. I am now legally eligible to advise about open-end funds and mediate these financial assets by §34f Abs. 1 Ziff. 1 GewO. I took this proficiency test to deepen my understanding of important investment fund specific legal aspects and further tailor my profile towards the asset management industry.

In April 2020, my Bachelor Thesis was published by the Junior Management Science Journal in their latest series Review of Business Studies. Shortly before, I was honored to present and discuss my findings in front of leading heads of a New Work initiative of the Bavarian State Bank, my current employer at that time. If you're interested in my research about how intrinsically motivating employees with meaningful work might yield a competitive edge in the ongoing War for Talent, you can find my thesis here or via its ISBN (978-3-346-15351-7).

In October 2019, I continued my education at TUM with the highly renowned consecutive master program of Management & Technology. I chose this study program to build on my existing knowledge and further deepen my understanding of Finance and Computer Science, specializing on the applications of Artificial Intelligence and its various forms of learning (Machine / Deep / Reinforcement Learning) in the context of capital markets. Currently, I'm in my penultimate semester with a preliminary grade of 1.5 (German scale) and so far, my relevant coursework comprises the following:

Finance & Accounting Major:

• Asset Management & Derivatives
• Behavioral Finance
• Capital Markets Law
• International Capital Markets & Investment Practice
• Private Equity

Informatics Minor:

• Advanced Principles of Databases
• Blockchain Engineering
• Business Analytics & Machine Learning
• Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence
• Introduction to Deep Learning

From November 2018 to August 2021, I was working part-time as a working student at the Bavarian State Bank (BayernLB). During this time, I've held three different positions (in chronological order).

Project Management Officer for the digitization project DEAP

I worked as the PMO in the agile software development environment of a digitization project to migrate the bank's internal credit process into MS Dynamics 365. During this time, I got to experience the SCRUM methodology in its full glory - from sprint meetings (daily, review, retrospective, planning) to user stories in Jira, project status reports and management presentations in front of a steering committee of several division managers, as well as creating various marketing documents and media for the bank-wide intranet.

Business Management Mid Office

In my next role, I got to be an epic-owner myself within the DEAP ecosystem. I conceptualized a migration strategy for the existing task controlling system, suggested improvements and new features, and met with the project's business analysts and software engineers to consult about the requirements and interim results.

Other than that, I mainly assisted the division manager by creating functional and performance reports of each department using a monstrous excel file operating on VBA and Power Pivot, as well as building up a knowledge database spanning market research summaries of disruptions and new technologies in the financial services industry.

Credit Service Real Estate & Structured Finance

For my last working student position, I initially wanted to get into the Financial Markets Division of the bank and was already in advanced talks with the debt capital markets senior director, when the COVID pandemic hit work and rendered any prospects for a working student position basically impossible. Luckily, a position in the real estate business of the bank opened up spontaneously and I gladly took the opportunity.

In the end, I learned quite a lot about real estate and property development financing, from auditing lease agreements and insurance contracts to preparing guarantees, lien releases and in rem rights and working together with the relevant authorities such as district courts, land registry offices and notaries.

From October 2017 to March 2018, I was incredibly lucky to fulfill a childhood dream of mine - visiting the land in the far east, Japan. 

Within my participation in the TUMexchange program, I studied at Tohoku University, Japan's most prestigious university, in Sendai for the duration of one semester. Sendai is located in the heart of Miyagi Prefecture and is the second largest Japanese city north of Tokyo. Sendai is also steeped in history. It was founded by the legendary samurai lord Date Masamune ("One-Eyed Dragon"), one of Japan's most powerful feudal lords, in the year 1600 and is also popularly known as the City of Trees due to its lush flora. Unfortunately, Sendai is also quite famous in recent history, as it was very badly affected by the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

I therefore arrived with great awe and made it my goal to learn as much as possible about Japan's rich language, culture, values, history and modern working world in the few months that I was given. Hence, I deliberately took a break from my regular study subjects and enrolled exclusively in courses of the linguistic-cultural area. In many task-based and creative group works with both, Japanese and international students, I learned a lot about working with and mediating an intercultural team where sensible topics such as work ethics, punctuality and readiness for discourse might differ completely from one's own perspective. I have also had ample opportunity to reflect on myself as a 'foreigner' and developed a whole new perspective on the importance of a country's culture and history.

During the winter vacations, I traveled to Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara and Osaka together with my best friend, who came to visit me from Germany. Luckily, the financial compensation I received from the JASSO (Japan Student Services Association) scholarship made traveling across Japan a bit less expensive.

In the end, I learned hundreds of Japanese words, around 300 kanji (characters from Chinese) and even a few karate forms (kata), but none of this has stayed with me as much as the feeling of literally being on the other side of the world, all alone and 'lost in translation'. During this time I grew a lot and gained a whole new set of self-confidence and independence. It was one of the best times in my life and I very much wish to return one day.

From October 2016 to September 2017, I was a working student at Munich Network e.V., a non-profit organization that serves as an innovation catalyst between innovation providers (mostly international tech startups) and innovation enablers (mostly established and leading German industry corporates). My tasks comprised researching fitting early-stage startups in Europe and Israel for upcoming venture events of the industry partners, contacting their leading heads via phone and mail, and supporting them during the application and selection process. This was a great opportunity to get out of my comfort zone, learn to pitch these events in front of busy founders and board members and convince them to apply, honing my English speaking skills in the process.

In July 2014, I graduated high school top of the class with a final grade of 1.0 (best possible grade on German scale). Furthermore, I received the book price of the German Physical Society upon proposal of the school principal. For my A-levels, I have been examined in German, English and Mathematics in writing, as well as orally in Astrophysics and History.