What year did
you graduate and from which program?
I graduated with the degree MSc in Wood Science in the spring of 2004.
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Northern Germany in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, between the city of Hamburg to the South and the border to Denmark to the North.
Why did you choose UBC Forestry?
After high school, I became a joiner/cabinet maker apprentice and graduated as a journeyman. A back injury then forced me to abandon my plans to become a master craftsman and choose a less physically demanding career. I took up university studies in Wood Science and Forest Products Economics at the University of Hamburg in Germany. My graduation thesis was on physical properties of sawn wood from different regions in Sweden. During this thesis work I spent the first half of 1996 at the Technical Research Institute of Sweden (SP). My supervisors there had very good contacts to doctors David Barrett and Frank Lam at UBC and since I had had a strong interest in moving to British Columbia for some time already, this presented the perfect opportunity for me to start making connections. So eventually I was accepted into the Masters’ Program at UBC’s Faculty of Forestry, Department of Wood Science where I started in May 1997 as a grad student under Dr. Thomas Maness. Commencing graduate studies at an internationally distinguished school of wood science in one of the most livable cities of the world, UBC Forestry seemed to offer me the perfect step-in for my international research career in wood products.
What was your first job after graduation (related or not to your degree)?
My first “real” employment was as Research Engineer for a large Swedish forest products industry group of which today only the sawmilling and building products divisions are remaining under the name Setra Group. This company hired me while I was still studying leading to my leaving UBC and Vancouver in December 1999 without finalizing my Master’s thesis. Getting the thesis in shape for graduation then turned into a rather tedious process and lasted another three years.
What are you doing now and how did you end up there?
Today, I work as Senior Product Development Engineer for IKEA, a large international home furnishing company. IKEA is frequently ranked as one of the most attractive employers in Sweden and internationally. The company offers a wide variety of fields to work in and strongly supports their employees’ personal growth through internal training programs, the possibility to try different jobs and opportunities to work abroad. This strongly motivated me to search for employment with IKEA and in 2006 I started working as an engineer with IKEA’s product development division at their main site in Sweden. When the product development division opened a branch office in Shanghai, China I relocated there in July 2011 to support in the establishment of this site. This was greatly facilitated by the fact that my wife is Chinese (though not from Shanghai) and our two daughters already spoke Chinese fluently.
What is your fondest memory of your time at UBC?
Something that I remember very fondly from my time at UBC is working as a teaching assistant (TA) with undergraduate students in courses such as Industrial Engineering, Basic Wood Processing, and Practical Wood Working Training with Rob Furst. I remember how impressed I was with all the great and innovative ideas that came from these young minds both daily during class and in the different assignments. This impression is lasting and still today I seek to work with younger people to help them grow and to also gain new insights myself. Here in China I am currently working with an intern who is an undergraduate student at the Program of Wood and Civil Engineering at Bern University of Applied Sciences, a school that UBC’s Centre for Advanced Wood Processing closely cooperates with. Not in the least, I also rather fondly remember quite a few lunches with my office mates at the Pit Pub (does it still exist?) from where we sometimes did not return until the pub closed late at night.
If you weren’t working where you are now what profession would you most like to try?
By a lucky mix of coincidence and determination, and although my life has taken many unexpected turns during the years, I am right now very much in a profession and a position where I like being. I like the work I am doing and I like the people I am working with. Owing to IKEA’s way of developing people that I described earlier, I feel a great freedom in choosing the life that I and my family want to live and therefore I do not feel any need to be anywhere else but where I am right now.
What is the toughest business or professional decision you’ve had to make?
The decision that I still remember as the toughest lies already more than twenty years back. From the early days of my apprenticeship, becoming a Master cabinet-maker and running my own company had been my only goal. When a back injury forced me to give up this dream, I didn’t have a choice, of course, but I was devastated nevertheless. Later, giving up my academic career and focusing instead on my engineering and project management skills was almost as tough of a decision to make, although it quickly turned out to be one of the smartest and best decisions I ever made.
What do you aspire to 10 years from now? (personally and/or professionally)
Both on the personal as well as on the professional level it seems an almost inevitable future step that one day my family and I will try to find a new home in Vancouver or somewhere else in BC, though I am not sure whether that will be in exactly 10 years. BC and especially Vancouver offer us the great outdoors and the care-about-each-other attitude of the Scandinavian countries where we have lived so long enriched with a mix of both Western and Asian cultures which are both combined in our family. Also, the background in wood products engineering should make such a step possible.
Do you have any advice for students considering enrolling in forestry?
Three things I would like to mention here:
Be broad in your selection of courses; being able to gain some insights in fields related to your area of expertise not only enables you later to select from a wider range of jobs but also it will greatly help you in your professional decision-making and in building consensus across groups.
Embrace diversity in every respect; it will enrich both your career and your personal life.
Finalize your thesis before you start working for a company; every employer will have understanding for this and you will deliver better and quicker results.
From Branchlines October 2012