Theme: Beyond the Ordinary

Hereby, the organizers want to invite all interested potential participants to experience a diverse range of talks which will motivate them to think "beyond the ordinary" and to evaluate different facts, situations or issues from multiple perspectives.
The organizing team was able to invite an interesting, diverse, and inspiring range of speakers so that all students, professors, and staff from HHL - Leipzig Graduate School of Management, all students from Leipzig and the Leipzig region as well as all other interested participants are warmly welcome to join our event which will be Beyond the Ordinary!

Werk 2 Kulturfabrik Leipzig e.V.
Kochstraße 132
Leipzig, Sachsen, 04277
Germany

Andreas Schneider

Data scientist

Andreas is known as a data scientiest and subject matter expert in the area of unstructured data analysis. He joined his current employer, IBM, in 2008 as a scholarship student. During his studies he delivered several projects at the university and IBM in the area of unstructured data analysis, text mining and algorithms, classification, semantic web and computational linguistics. His regular career at IBM started in April 2010 as a consultant for business analytics and optimization. Since August 2015, Andreas is part of IBM Watson Europe to build cognitive solutions based on unstructured data and natural language processing technologies as a solution architect. His professional experience and education involve more than eight years of practical knowledge in text analytics modeling and development, unstructured data analysis, data mining, supervised & unsupervised learning techniques, content analytics and natural language processing.

Andy Ouderkirk

Corporate scientist

As a 3M corporate scientist, Dr. Andy Ouderkirk’s role is to create new business opportunities by combining market trends, manufacturing capabilities and technologies. Andy, who has a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Northwestern University, has been with 3M since 1985. He is an inventor on 192 issued U.S. patents and has more than 50 publications and invited presentations. Recognitions over the years include the Fast Company Fast 50 award, Finance and Commerce Innovator of the Year, American Chemical Society National Award for Creative Invention and the R&D Magazine Innovator of the Year. He is also a member of the 3M Carlton Society, a “hall of fame” of 3M scientists.

Graham Candy

Graham Candy had no idea what awaited him, when he boarded his Berlin-bound flight, leaving New Zealand behind him. The boy who skipped classes in school to play guitar and learn chords from his friends, wouldn't have known that he would be chasing his dream as a man eleven time zones away. It's been almost two years since the 25-year-old musician was in Kreuzberg's Riverside Studios, recording 'She Moves'. The song with 'Alle Farben' reached gold status in Germany, selling over 170,000 copies. Candy's debut album 'Plan A' has been in work since he first stepped into Germany to create a colourful portrayal of his diverse music style and his intimate catchy lyrics.

Hendrik Heuermann

Sustainability manager

Hendrik Heuermann had to learn how to celebrate failure. Diagnosed with a rare neurological disease at the age of 23, he lost his balance, his motor activity, and his hope. After an initial dark period, he started to look at the positive side: What if you don’t focus on what goes wrong, but instead celebrate the risks that you are taking? What if you aren’t afraid of fear? An exciting transformation began - not only in his private life, but also professionally and in his behavior towards people around him. This talk is personal, motivating, emotional, and funny. It is all about how to fight fear and to keep enjoying life despite the hard times. He writes, questions himself and motivates others on his blog at "schweinehund-knutscht-depression.de". He is the author of the book and audio book „Karma, wir müssen reden - guter Umgang mit schlechten Diagnosen“ (“Karma, we need to talk - a good attitude towards bad diagnosis“).

Henning Beck

Neuroscientist

Dr. Henning Beck, neuroscientist and author, supports businesses to use brain-based approaches in order to develop innovative and efficient workflows. He studied biochemistry in Tübingen from 2003 to 2008. After his diploma thesis, he started his research at the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research and intensified his work at the Institute of Physiological Chemistry at the University of Ulm. Supported by a PhD scholarship granted by the Hertie Foundation he did his doctorate at the Graduate School of Cellular & Molecular Neuroscience in Tübingen. He expanded his scientific expertise by an International Diploma in Project Management at the University of California, Berkeley in 2013. Until 2014, he worked for start-ups in the San Francisco Bay Area to develop creative workspace designs and advanced communication styles based on neuroscientific principles.

Jan Jakob

Jan Jakob’s life consists of music every day. From starting as a small boy taking piano classes to studying music in Hannover – all as a means to an end: His music sounds as relaxing as a long car drive down the West Coast, looking for hours into remoteness or experiencing the sunrise with the wish that it will set soon again.

Konstanze Frölich

Cultural manager

Konstanze Frölich combines the worlds of art and business in a fresh and exciting way in her roles as consultant, writer and speaker. She has studied languages and art history, taught and lectured at German subsidiaries abroad… then, in 1993 she returned once again to Germany. For more than 20 years, Ms. Frölich has worked for major corporations, organizations and educational institutions as both a PR professional and an expert in the field of communication and corporate culture. In addition, she continues to be active in art education as a Cultural Manager, an ongoing coach for artists and gives insightful seminars speaking on the interwoven topics of art, communication, and business ethics.

Marc Schumacher

Managing director

As alumnus of the HHL Graduate School of Management and member of the „Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für Marketing und Unternehmensführung“, Dr. Marc Schumacher has strong ties to HHL, where he completed his MBA and his doctorate. He started his career in Fashion Retail and quickly climbed the corporate ladder: HUGO BOSS, Breuninger and finally the TOM TAILOR Group, where he became Chief Retail Officer and Member of the Board at the age of 34. However, in a rather unusual move, he left the S-DAX venture in 2015 and joined the medium-sized BrandRetail Company LIGANOVA - deeply believing in the company’s stance and mission to close the gap between the digital and the physical world. As Managing Director, he is responsible for the operational lead of the company that has committed itself to build nothing less than the future of retail. Topics like the future connected POS and how a Brand’s image are translated into three-dimensional spaces are key substance of his daily business.

Maxi Knust

Entrepreneur

Maxi Knust studied Business Administration and Strategic Business Development in Hannover. As she always had a strong interest in the startup scene and the question of how to start a company, she got inspired by hearing the motto „If not now, when?“ and decided to wait no longer to start her own business at the age of 26. Maxi moved then to Berlin and founded as solopreneur the digital magazine for female entrepreneurs Fempreneur. In 2016 she also hosted the first Fempreneur Summit event during Berlin Web Week successfully. Maxi‘s goal is to encourage women starting their own businesses by showing inspirational female entrepreneurs. In her new project „Female Founders Book“ she is covering 30 interviews of female founders across Germany, Austria and Switzerland, showing their startup challenges and success factors. Maxi is a passionate speaker about female empowerment and entrepreneurship to motivate people to believe in themselves and go their own way.

Maximilian Twelker

VC

As VP Venture Development at Futury, Maximilian empowers talented entrepreneurs to transform unexplored business ideas and promising technologies into customer value by helping them to develop new solutions from scratch. Having previously worked on multiple startup projects, he has gained first-hand experience on how to deal with and overcome the set of obstacles founders have. Prior to that, he has supported the transformation and digitalisation process of one of Europe’s leading media corporations, Tamedia AG, working closely with the CEO and Board of Directors. During that time, he also contributed as a blogger to the Swiss media outlets Tages-Anzeiger, Berner Zeitung, and Der Bund. Before that, he started his career as a Management Consultant specialising in Supply-Chain Management, Procurement and Restructuring advising Private Equity Clients.

Suzanne Grieger-Langer

Psychologist and author

Profiler Suzanne Grieger-Langer steps up for top performers, challenging the status quo of cuddly leaderships by freeing performers from pricks and psychopaths. If you want to be a decision making key-player you’ve come to the right person. Profiler Suzanne is a certified pedagogue, psychologist, psychotherapist – best selling author, publisher, lecturer… Successful entrepreneur since 1993, she is active worldwide with a network of 150 experts that spans the globe. Her profiling is your key to 7 billion people. Her USP is the computation of character profiles on a psychogenetic code level. Her specialty is turning people into personalities. If not her, who else can help you navigate the depths of humanity? She instructs intelligence agents about surviving in high risk areas and creates mental security blue prints for decision makers in business and science.

Tina Thörner

Motor sport driver

Tina Thörner is a role model for women in motor sports and beyond. Originating from a Swedish rural area, she became the first woman to ever participate as a co-driver in the Rallye Dakar. She became female world champion thrice and won the World Cup twice. Apart from her achievements in motor sports in which she still supports women in their careers and dreams, she works as a coach and trainer as well as a yoga teacher.