I am currently still 44 years old. I am married to Melanie and we have two children, a boy Liam aged 8 years and a girl Jolie who is 10 years old.
I qualified as a turbines electronics engineer and worked for several years in this profession.
I missed the contact with people but still wanted to utilize my technical experience and was fortunate that several employment agencies asked me to assist in the organization and training of temporary technical workers.
I love sport and specically Badmington, which I started at the age of 14 and have been playing on league level. Of course, soccer forms an important part of life in Germany. So much so, that on the day our daughter Julie was born in 2006, our Physician was under tremendous pressure to attend the world cup Germany vs Poland game! (Luckily for him, Melanie made sure that this happened)
The arrival of Julie also brought new demands and Melanie spent more time at home and started to look for a suitable creche, which is ususally done already at birth due to the long waiting list.
This turned out to be a rather frustrating excercise and we decided to start our own private creche instead. With all the beaurocracy, this turned out to become a project that took almost twol years to realise.
In order to gain experience in this field, I decided to join the Marketing Department of the largest supplier of equipment to nursery schools. My duties as a consultant included to advise architects in the design and planning of nursery schools. Little did I know at the time that this proved to be the corner stone of my future career path.
Liam was born in 2008 and again we were confronted with soccer challenges. This time our Physician, a born Egyptian, was encouraging Melanie to hurry because he wanted to watch the African Championship semifinal with Egypt!!
At that stage, Melanie had to again spend more time at home with the children but her own creche had become a reality.
Due to the high demand, we decided to open additional nursery school facilities and during 2013, our little Company has grown to such an extent that I joined on a full time basis as Managing Director.
Currently, we operate a total of 9 nursery schools in Iserlohn and Hagen catering for 750 children and over 180 employees.
Melanie has been a Rotarian for over three years and we have known Hans and Tina for over 13 years.
On several occasions our nursery schools have assisted Rainbow Kids in Port Alfred.
Rotary is very familiar to me and I am delighted to have been invited to join the E-Club.
I look forward to being of service and to contribute to the Club wherever possible.