Elise
For over two decades, Elise has contributed to creating strategies and business models that reflect our complex environmental, social and economic reality. Since 2021 with Skynative, and before that at chemical powerhouse BASF. With her experience as an analyst and economic journalist during major economic and financial market upheavals, one of her core strengths is wading through and making sense of complex environments.
After various positions in communications, strategy and business model design, she had the opportunity to develop a large-scale, global program at the intersection of strategic innovation, business development, and socio-ecological impact. The program centered around an approach and methods developed in collaboration with internal experts and leading business school thinkers. Her award-winning work is featured in a Harvard Business School case study and in the documentary, film Co-creating Innovation by renowned filmmaker Thomas Grube.
At Skynative, Elise’s focus has been on driving strategy for non-core innovation and business development; building and nurturing new ventures; designing partner ecosystems for environmental and social impact; as well as multistakeholder incubation concepts in underdeveloped real estate as well as digital transformation.
Elise is certified sociocracy trainer and part of Sociocracy For All’s Global Community of Practice network. Sociocracy is a transformational governance framework that helps organizations and partner ecosystems work toward common goals with minimum bureaucracy and maximum empowerment of individuals and teams. In her spare time, she is active at the Commons Institut, the German Impact Investing Initiative BII and a local non-profit. She also conducts empirical and theoretical research on alternative economic and organizational concepts. She is a long-year practitioner of mindfulness meditation and non-violent communication.
Entrepreneurial, commercial, and creative thinking has shaped me from an early age due to my family background. Studies in business administration therefore came quite naturally.
My start at the family-owned company Henkel, with its exciting brand portfolio, focus on sustainability and a pronounced social attitude proved to be very positive.
In the context of German reunification, I had the opportunity to design and build a social entrepreneurship center in East Germany from scratch within the Henkel Group and to get it up and running as its founding managing director.
The close link between business management know-how and social impact, building public-private partnerships, and above all providing support for society and young entrepreneurs were highly motivating. In this context, I was also entrusted with the management of the non-profit Henkel Förderwerk for the region of the former production site.
My focus on small businesses and start-ups, many of which were founded by people who were also working on social challenges, inspired me and is reflected in many of my current favorite projects.
Throughout my career, I have led strategic and operational management functions in the branded goods business, but also been tasked with setting up innovation management, helping to shape the sustainability strategies, developing a separate division for new business models that not only covered commercial business models but also social entrepreneurial concepts that fit the portfolio – right through to philanthropic concepts with a “social impact,” such as the construction of primary schools in rural regions of Vietnam or a village laundrette within the sustainability strategy or the projects of the Fritz Henkel Foundation.
I then applied this broad and generalist experience at the consulting firm EY, where I worked on projects for various companies in the branded goods business, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, the service sector, etc. – in particular to support them in matters relating to innovation and new business development. Working on incubation structures for start-ups and “open innovation” ecosystems is a particular passion of mine.
I continue to bring this expertise to the fore at Skynative Consulting and in dialogue with young start-ups, for example, in my role as a business angel at NRW Bank.
Merck, Bundesinitiative Impact Investing, Henkel, Klinikum Chemnitz, Schilling Architektur, Bartenbach, Chronikit, NRW Bank, Bürgerstiftung Pfalz, BASF, Enzymicals, Ernst & Young, Kluh Services, Frelu Hergert
