I’M NICK

I’m your navigator for strategy, positioning, communications, reputation, and sustainable leadership.

Together we’ll empower your company, foundation, government entity, or NGO to tackle change and shape the future.

I’ll lend my strengths, experience, and integrity to this effort.

MY STRENGTHS

I love to find simple solutions to complex challenges. And according to the Gallup StrengthsFinder, this aligns well with my five top strengths of “ideation, strategic, responsibility, futuristic, and empathy.” Myers-Briggs ranks me as an ENFP type: “Enthusiastic, insightful, innovative, versatile, and tireless in pursuit of new possibilities. He enjoys working on teams to bring about change related to making things better for people.”

MY EXPERIENCE

My roughly 30 years of experience—first as a journalist, then as a communicator, strategist, and intermediary for market leaders in three challenging industries (automotive, foods and luxury, financial services) in leading roles with complex responsibilities—empower me to develop themes and positions, identify interrelationships, and manage complexity.

MY INTEGRITY

Functioning as an intermediary between my employers and the social institutions around them, I spent three decades building a network defined by trust and respect vis-à-vis government entities, NGOs, media, businesses, foundations, and the academic community.

MY BACKGROUNDg

From 1998 to 2016, I oversaw sustainable strategy and communications for Allianz SE. As Senior Vice President for Corporate Affairs, I developed the company’s social positioning and social network on behalf of CEOs Henning Schulte-Noelle, Michael Diekmann, and Oliver Bäte. I was involved in developing the areas of communications, compliance, development (corporate strategy), governmental affairs, regulatory affairs, sustainability and ESG, and market management—and managed strategic partnerships with these functional areas.

In my position I developed and headed reputation and issue management at Allianz, managed the dialog with all social stakeholders, and established public platforms like the Open Knowledge website and the Allianz Forum in Berlin. I was also responsible for the research project on the history of Allianz in the Third Reich and helped establish the “Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future” foundation in partnership with the U.S. government and German Chancellor Schröder.

I was born in Munich in 1965. Following my studies in political science and sociology at the University of Bonn and University of Munich, I spent the period from 1984 to 1998 working as a journalist and communicator for the Office of the Army at the German Bundeswehr, Rhein-Zeitung, Tele 5, BMW, and Philip Morris Deutschland, where I rose to Head of External Communications. I’m a married father of five children.