5 years of BPN - when you look back: Which 3 terms best describe your journey and why these in particular?
- Professionals: Few people work at BPN, but all of them have an incredibly broad range of skills and everyone has at least one specialist area that they really master.
- Family - no matter which country I'm dealing with, BPN feels like a big family where everyone pulls together.
- Everything is possible: At BPN, we get an incredible amount done with incredibly few resources. Two or three of us carry out complex marketing campaigns, shoot films or program websites at a level at which entire teams would otherwise work.
How has your view of development cooperation and entrepreneurship changed since you started at BPN?
Even before BPN, I had the opportunity to look into various areas of development aid, partly thanks to my studies in international relations. When I came into contact with BPN five years ago, I knew that this was the form of development aid I had always been looking for.
IT, web, CRM - that sounds like technology to many people. How would you explain the difference your work makes for our entrepreneurs worldwide?
I'm probably not the classic, introverted IT person. I see my work more as a mediator between man and machine. Listening and empathy often come first. IT is a tool to make the work of our professionals more efficient and of better quality, as well as to identify and exploit global synergies.
Which of your projects or digital tools do you think has had the biggest impact - perhaps behind the scenes?
CRM has become a powerful tool for global data analysis since I started at BPN. By tracking the progress of our program participants centrally, we have the opportunity to constantly improve our work on a global scale and make it more efficient.
You recently spent several months on assignment in Rwanda. What was your most formative moment there - professionally or personally?
In IT, I deal with all employees from all countries on a daily basis. But it was limited to video calls. Finally meeting people in "real life" and experiencing them in their own reality was incredibly touching and fulfilling.
Was there a moment when you felt: "This is exactly why I'm doing this job" - especially on the ground in Rwanda?
At BPN, there's a lot going on in a working day and you try to get as much done as possible, so the interpersonal aspects are sometimes neglected. Once you are on site, you suddenly realize how much your work is appreciated. And how little it takes to make a big difference on site.
What have you learned in the last five years at BPN that has shaped you beyond your work?
How different the realities of people who have to deal with each other can be. During my time in Rwanda with my family, I was suddenly confronted with the fact that an open conflict broke out in neighboring Congo three hours away by car. While my parents immediately canceled their visit to us, this was not worth mentioning to the staff, as they had known about it for years.
What was your "nerdiest" moment at BPN - and why are you still proud of it?
Haha. There are often "nerdy" moments in my work. When, at the end of the day, the code you've programmed finally works and you know that it will reduce the manual data entry of all employees globally by a third, then you're really proud. Even if hardly anyone can understand exactly what you've done. But that's not so important 😉
