Explanation of the program

I am Nina from our Roland Berger office in Düsseldorf and I am part of the European Female Talent Program. When I applied to Roland Berger last year I was very excited to see the advertisement for the program. It gives me the opportunity to work in two other European Roland Berger offices other than my home office for five months each, similar to a semester abroad but on the job. So, after a couple of months in Germany, I moved to Amsterdam for the spring this year and will be going to Madrid next year.

Start of the program

All women in the program come from different offices all over Europe. We all started together with the kickoff seminar in October, where besides having training with other new joiners we also had a day of activities to get to know each other. This female network will be maintained during multiple special trainings, and of course our times abroad, which sometimes overlap.

Project experience

I arrived in Amsterdam in February together with my colleague Lisa from Paris and for the first month we were still joined by Anouk, Elina, Tegla and Willemijn from Amsterdam (who later left to their new offices). I started on a project right on the first day together with a big team from Amsterdam, Paris and Düsseldorf. The client was a French electrical wholesaler for which we elaborated measures with leverage potential in the areas of digital, supply chain and sales. As I am part of the Consumer Goods and Retail platform in Germany, this was a new field for me, but with the help of my team I got into the topic quickly. We also had the opportunity to work with the client on site and have a final team dinner together in Paris. Later I worked on other projects, supporting a MedTech startup and a consortium of Dutch universities. This all added up to some very broad project experience with many fond memories.

Cultural differences

Germany and the Netherlands are culturally quite similar. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see the small differences in daily work life and in the Roland Berger office specifically. Because of its size, the office is very familiar and everyone knows each other. I had to learn quickly that I have to be at lunch at 12 sharp and I had to get used to the Dutch lunch cuisine (toasties, peanut butter and hagelslag). I was also able to join in with some of the local events, most importantly King’s Day celebrations on the canals of Amsterdam. All of this made it very easy and fun to integrate into a new office.

Curious about what a day in Nina's life currently looks like? Follow Nina and her colleague Lisa through their day and have a look at their Instagram reel .

Special trainings

One special training we had during the first months of the program was "Presence and Performance". All eleven women took part in it at our office in Munich, so everyone had the chance to see our headquarters. The training consisted of two very interactive days with lots of role playing and exercises but also theory about speeches, voice and (non-verbal) language. We all learned a lot about our personal presence and way of presenting that will come in handy in many situations in our careers.

Future outlook

I really enjoyed my time in Amsterdam, both the office and the city, and I hope to be able to go back some time. But I am also looking forward to working in Germany again, and of course I'm excited for my time in Madrid next year.