About

Neither of my parents went to university, nor did my grandparents. My parents both worked in insurance, while I was the child who constantly asked questions about life.

Why does the human body work the way it does? How do genes determine disease? How do microscopic changes shape entire organisms?

Science became my way of making sense of the world

I studied biology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, fascinated by genetics, microbiology and molecular medicine. During an Erasmus exchange at Cardiff University, I spent my first months in a research laboratory, culturing stem cells from wisdom teeth in a gel matrix.

Watching cells grow and differentiate felt like uncovering a hidden language of life. I wanted to understand it all. For a long time, I believed that if I looked closely enough, I would eventually find the answers.

Later, in Munich, I worked on brain injury models in mice in the lab of Professor Magdalena Götz at Helmholtz Munich and LMU Munich. I then researched pancreatic cancer, testing combinations of therapies on cultured cells. There was something deeply satisfying about reducing complexity to something you could observe under a microscope; it felt like getting closer to understanding life.

Then my semester abroad took me halfway around the world, to the University of Queensland in Australia. I thought I was going there to broaden my scientific training. Instead, it changed the questions I was asking.

From cells to systems

In Australia, I stepped outside molecular biology. I studied terrestrial ecology, forensic science and marine environments.

On Heron Island, I analysed the symbiotic algae living inside corals to understand the progression of bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef. Their relationship is astonishingly delicate. When the water warms, that balance begins to break: the corals lose the algae that sustain them, and the reef slowly turns white.

Until then, I had spent years looking through microscopes. Suddenly I was looking at an ecosystem. Climate change stopped being an abstract scientific concept, and I saw how environmental change could reshape entire living systems.

I didn’t know it then, but this experience planted the seed that would eventually bring me to climate and health. I returned to Germany with a question that biology alone couldn’t answer: how do societies respond when the world changes? That question led me somewhere I hadn’t expected.

Looking beyond biology

Back in Munich, I found myself asking different questions. Biology explained how disease happens. It could not always explain why societies succeed or fail to protect people and the environment.

So, while completing my master’s research on pancreatic cancer and novel combination therapies at Klinikum rechts der Isar, I started a second master’s degree: an M.Sc. in Management at the Technical University of Munich, covering business economics, economics, management science and law.

It meant laboratory work during the day, economics lectures and assignments in the evenings, writing my thesis, and working weekends to finance my studies. Those years taught me resilience. More importantly, they taught me that solving complex problems requires more than scientific knowledge: it requires understanding people, organisations and systems.

From research to implementation

By the time I graduated, I knew one thing: I didn’t want to spend my career inside a laboratory. I wanted to see how scientific discoveries become medicines that reach patients. The pharmaceutical industry seemed like the obvious place, but from the outside, it was a black box.

Instead of choosing a narrow specialist role, I joined a graduate programme to understand the entire journey of drug development. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made.

Rather than becoming an expert in a single function, I learned how science, clinical development, medical affairs, operations and strategy connect. That systems perspective has shaped every role since.

Learning how organisations work

Over time, I found myself moving further away from the bench and closer to decision-making. Not because I had stopped caring about science; quite the opposite. I realised that some of the biggest obstacles to improving health weren’t scientific. They were organisational.

How people collaborate. How decisions are made. How priorities are set. How evidence travels, or fails to travel, from researchers to policymakers, from experts to practitioners, from ideas to action.

As Chief of Staff, I learned that helping organisations work better can sometimes have as much impact as generating new knowledge. Science matters, but implementation determines whether science changes anything.

Years after I first saw coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, those experiences came together in a way I could never have planned. Climate. Health. Economics. Strategy. Implementation. They had always been pieces of the same puzzle.

Health in a changing climate

Before moving into my current role, I completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Multilateral Diplomacy and International Institutions with UNITAR and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. I wanted to better understand how international organisations, governments and policy shape global health.

That perspective became invaluable when I joined Bayer’s Global Medical and Evidence Team as Climate & Health Implementation and Science Lead. For me, climate and health is not simply another scientific field. It brings together everything I have been working towards.

The biology of heat stress. The economics of resilience. The organisation of healthcare systems. The translation of evidence into policy. The protection of those most vulnerable.

Today my work focuses on understanding how extreme heat affects human health, and how organisations can translate scientific evidence into practical action.

Looking ahead

Looking back, my career appears to have moved through very different worlds: biology, economics, drug development, executive leadership, organisational transformation, international health and climate science. To me, however, they have always been part of the same journey.

The question I continue to ask myself: how do we use science to better protect people?

Whether working with governments, cities, healthcare systems or life science organisations, I believe our greatest challenge is no longer generating knowledge. It is turning that knowledge into decisions that improve lives. In a warming world, protecting human health will require disciplines, sectors and institutions to work together in entirely new ways.

That is where I see my purpose to contribute.