It is custom in Germany during primary and middle school to share friendship books with your peers. Friends fill out different questions so you don’t forget things like where you first met or your favourite memory with them. When I was ten or eleven, I wrote in a friend’s book that I wanted to live in an English-speaking country one day. A bit random I know, but that’s exactly what happened! In 2018, I flew from my beloved hometown of Berlin to Sydney. I landed on a Wednesday and went for a job interview at Insight Timer on the Thursday. Four days later I started work as the German Market Manager.
I was (and will always be) an arts kid – a teenager in Germany studying theatre, art history, and cultural semiotics, acting in experimental productions, even naming my dog after Frida Kahlo. Never for one second did I think I’d end up in tech, and yet here I now am in Sydney, happy.
I joined a small team at first, but over the last 3 years I’ve been fortunate to join different sized teams and assume various roles as Insight Timer has grown to 120 people. With every shift comes new responsibilities, and with every new role, I wonder each time how I ended up here. Often I question why I was given these new opportunities – aren’t there many more experienced people out there? (Yes yes, I suffer from imposter syndrome every now and then!). But with each new moment of doubt, I learned that the company wants to see me grow. I am trusted. And with this trust I have been able to grow and influence many areas of the company; supporting the German-speaking teacher community, launching and managing the Insight Timer Blog, launching the website in five foreign languages, tapping into email campaign lifecycles, and now, more recently, starting to manage my own projects and team.
I am nearly 26 years old now; a critical time in my professional career. What am I striving towards? What are my goals? Where do I want to be in 10 years time? Even though I don’t have the answers to these questions, I know that with every step I take at Insight Timer, I learn new skills that will stay with me forever, and I grow with a team that grows alongside me.
