What are the greatest challenges that women who want to become leaders face in today’s work environment?  

What do you enjoy most about your leadership role?  

Please join the PWG Panel Discussion event to gain insight into these and other questions related to women in leadership. Our panel speakers bring with them a broad range of experiences which will help guide us through the discussion facilitated by PWG President Jill Allemang. 

 

Valerie is from The Netherlands. She studied business economics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam and also concluded a marketing MBA at the Michigan State University in Lansing, USA.   After her studies, Valerie joined Rabobank Germany where she built out the bank’s sales platform. In 1998 she joined General Electric’s (GE) Corporate Audit Staff and worked for 4 years across the globe on several cross-divisional audit assignments. In 2002 she moved back to Europe and took on the role of Pricing Leader for GE’s Consumer Finance business as a member of the senior management team of GE Money Bank, running the retail bank in Switzerland. In 2006 she joined Credit Suisse (CS) as the Global Quality leader (Operational Excellence) for Shared Services. In this role she has been responsible for the global roll-out & embedding of Lean Sigma (Operational Excellence) thinking across Shared Services in order to drive efficiency & process improvements. She has assumed additional responsibilities as the Regional Head for CoE | OE Program Execution for Switzerland as well as for the Global Enterprise Project team. Valerie is also an active member of the Credit Suisse Women’s Forum WF, where she serves as the co-chair of the 700+ member Women’s Forum Switzerland.

 

Claudia comes with over 20 years of experience in telecom in sales and operations. Prior to joining Alcatel-Lucent Claudia was Head of Division Service Excellence at Swisscom AG. She also served as Head of Division Service Business at Swisscom Solutions AG from 2005 to2007. Claudia has started her professional carrier in 1988 as an independent consultant and further held various key managerial positions in different companies in telecom segment in both Germany and Switzerland. 

 

 

 

Michaela holds a Business Administration degree from the University of Zurich as well as an Economics and Journalism degree from the University of Prague. Michaela is a Swiss Certified Tax Expert.Michaela joined PricewaterhouseCoopers in 1997 where she became Partner in 2003. Since 2009 Michaela is the leader of the Tax and Legal Services department in Zurich with about 250 staff members. Michaela has over 15 years of professional experience in advising domestic and multinational companies in national and international VAT issues. She has published articles on a variety of tax topics, both in Switzerland as well as abroad, and is a frequent speaker. In addition, Michaela has also  published a book on gender topics. Michaela is a mother of three.