I didn't choose a multicultural life. It chose me.
I was born in 1965 to an Italian mother and a German father. By the time I was a teenager, I had lived in four countries on three continents - Moscow, Thessaloniki, Cairo, Rome. I attended a Soviet kindergarten, German school in Moscow, Greece and Egypt, and sat my Abitur in Rome. I grew up learning and navigating languages, cultures and systems that had nothing in common — except the people inside them. I once wanted to be an actor. I chose law instead. Both, it turns out, are about understanding what makes people tick and stepping into the shoes of someone else.
FROM BERLIN TO BEIJING . A CAREER BUILT ON CHANGE
I studied law in West Berlin and Bonn. While waiting to begin my Referendariat, I joined the Treuhandanstalt - the agency responsible for privatising former East German state companies after reunification. It was 1992. The work was complex, politically charged and historically unique. And it taught me something I have never forgotten: transformation at scale is always about people first, systems second. After completing my legal training - including a long station in Tokyo - I joined the IHK München in 1996. I led the Euro Info Centre, a EU advisory office, and started turning it from a cost centre into a profit centre. It was my first real experience of building something from nothing.
In February 2000, I joined BMW Group - and stayed for nearly two decades. I started in Formula 1 and BMW Motorsports accompanying the team all over the planet to find sponsors. Moved into inhouse consulting, where I led organisational development and optimisation across Asian markets. Then came the assignment that changed everything: first setting up a Region China Office and then building the BMW National Sales Company in Beijing from the ground up - establishing structures, recruiting teams, creating a new regional presence for one of the world's most iconic brands in the world's fastest-growing market. I returned to Munich to represent the China region, before moving to Milan in 2010 as Director of MINI Italy - deepening my experience in wholesale, retail and dealer networks. In 2012 I came back to Munich to lead "Future Retail - Premium Retail Experience" globally, visiting markets across every continent and speaking about Customer Experience on stages around the world. It was on those stages that the idea began to form.
THE DECISION TO BUILD SOMETHING NEW
The idea came in 2017. Not as a flash of inspiration but as a growing conviction that customer experience was being fundamentally misunderstood by most organisations. I was fascinated by the intersection of psychology, neuroscience and CX: how little of what we know about human behaviour is actually applied in retail and organisational contexts. How much value is left on the table. I spent 2017 and 2018 developing the concept, left BMW at the end of 2018, and founded Circle4X GmbH in 2019. When COVID hit in 2020, it accelerated something I was already exploring: the role of XR (extended reality) in training, enabling and onboarding. What started as a thread became the core. The focus shifted to what I now call phygital experience: the interplay between physical, digital and virtual environments to create meaningful, lasting impact in learning, in organisations, in human performance. Since then I renamed the company to Circle4XR GmbH.
WHAT I DO TODAY
My work runs on two parallel tracks.
Through Circle4XR GmbH, for Brands like BMW, Mercedes-Bens USA, Zühlke, ENI S.p.A. and the Hera Group in Italy I develop and consult on future-proof training, enabling and onboarding solutions combining XR technology with deep expertise in how people actually learn and change.
Through my advisory and speaking practice, I work with leadership teams on the broader challenges of transformation: customer and employee experience (from physical to virtual), organisational design and development, business strategy and the cultural dynamics that make or break change programmes. My advisory clients include Volkswagen Group, BOND, Diconium and Brinkmann Pumpen.
I have spoken at over 26 conferences across four continents, in five languages.
MY WHY
I am driven by curiosity and by the conviction that changing your perspective is not a soft skill. It is the hardest and most strategic thing any leader or organisation can do. I have lived it. Across cultures, languages, industries and continents. That is not a biography. It is a methodology.
Change is inevitable. How you lead it isn't.
