Your Sparring Partner
& Kickstarter for
What’s Next
Strategic depth, clarity and hands-on leadership when you’re changing direction, entering a new market or building something new
Strategy Consulting | Fractional Leadership | Interim Management
20+ years | Corporate · Consulting · Founder | Germany · UK · Japan
You’ve reached a point where something needs to move. A new market or category offers an opportunity, your brand no longer reflects the business, a key project has lost momentum or a new initiative needs someone to get it underway. Perhaps you already know the direction and need help putting it into practice. Or the first task is to understand what is really going on.
Hi, I’m Christian. Moments like these are where I do my best work. I get to the core of unfamiliar businesses and topics unusually fast, look beyond the immediate brief to understand what’s driving the situation and say plainly what I see. I make complex situations easier to understand, so you and your team can decide how best to move forward. Then I help put those decisions into practice, working alongside you and your team.
That approach draws on more than two decades across corporate leadership, consulting and entrepreneurship: building a global consumer insights function at Mazda’s headquarters in Japan, leading brand, media, insights and go-to-market across Europe, establishing the German business of a Finnish consultancy and founding Europe’s first sustainable sneaker retail business combining e-commerce with three stores in different cities.
Whether you need a fresh perspective on a difficult question, someone to spearhead a new initiative or senior leadership for part of the week, I can step in where you need me most.
I’m based in Düsseldorf, working internationally and typically up to speed within days.
Some of the situations I’m brought in to help with
When strategic direction is unclear or alignment is missing
and an independent outside perspective is required to help understand what matters. For example: assess a business or market situation · bring customer and competitor insights into strategic decisions · sharpen positioning · help a leadership team agree on direction and priorities · add strategic capacity when your team is stretchedWhen something new must be built or repositioned
Experienced leadership to shape the approach and get it underway. For example: setup and lead a market entry from positioning to local roll-out · develop and deliver a launch and go-to-market plan · build a new function or team · reposition a brand or serviceWhen you need senior leadership during a transition without committing to a full-time hire
For example: lead marketing, corporate strategy or go-to-market on a fractional basis · step in as interim leader during a leadership gap · act as an independent sparring partner for a founder or managing director · put the positioning, team and go-to-market foundations in place for growthWhen teams are stuck between analysis and execution
and need clarity, priorities and hands-on momentum. For example: turn research into decisions · prioritise initiatives and clarify ownership · design and facilitate working sessions · lead the first phase of implementation
Functional Competence areas
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Strategic Marketing | Brand Strategy | Positioning & Narratives
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Market Research | Consumer Insights | Behavioural Science
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Corporate Strategy | Change & Business Transformations
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Go-to-Market | Business Development | New Ventures | Scale-Ups
Why me?
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Unique blend of long-term corporate, consulting & founder life
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Depth & breadth of functional & industrial experiences
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High degree of intercultural & relationship building competence
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Strategic mind coupled with entrepreneurial speed, energy & decision guts
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Ability to master new, unknown & complex topics with very fast turn-around
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Open, honest & curious Changemaker mindset
What I offer - Engagement models and use cases
Press the arrow to open for details
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Corporate, Brand & Sustainability Strategy
Audits, Readiness & Discovery Phases
Change & Business Transformation initiatives
Strong Automotive, Retail and B2B industry knowledge
No vested interests, hidden agendas & no Tech to sell on the back
For companies: Your honest second opinion & neutral sparring partner “Your outsourced In-house consultant”
For agencies: Your external advisor and expert to support your pitches and client projects
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SME’s, agencies & smaller consulting companies
Privately owned or Investor-led
Overall or Partial Lead
Kickstart & Spearhead
Open for co-founding opportunities
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Interim:
3+ months duration
Clear mandate, responsibility, budget (if applicable)
Remote or Hybrid
Fractional:
Between 1-3 days / week
Onsite/Hybrid/Remote
Perfect for Scale-Ups, SME’s or when the need for deep expertise meets lower budgets
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Strategic (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning, Narrative)
Operational Introducer (i.e. for foreign agencies) or local representative / contact / bridge helping companies to grow
External Advisor and Expert for agencies and institutes to support pitches and client projects
No “Telesales” function
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Vacant positions (i.e. no one fits the Brief yet, illness, maternity leave, etc.)
Clear mandate, responsibility, budget (if applicable)
Opportunity to change legacy ways of working
Initiation of Change & Business Transformation initiatives
My way of working together with you
Clarity under ambiguity
I cut through noise, identify root causes and frame decisions clearlyEntrepreneurial speed
I move fast without losing judgment - Testing, learning and adjusting in real timeHands-on Leadership
I don’t just advise. I step in, build and execute alongside and together with your teamsContextual & cultural fluency
Experienced across corporate, consulting and founder environments and across international, regional & local contextsFluent in modern Tech & AI
across the full value chain - from strategic thinking, research and concept development with leading LLMs - to content creation, automation and delivery using specialised AI-driven platformsTrust & sparring partnership
Valued as a creative, direct & honest counterpart in high-stakes situations
What are your Pivotal Moments? Let’s talk!
Alongside my advisory and leadership work, I write as 'The Liminalist' on Substack, exploring how leaders and organisations can best navigate transitions, uncertainty and identity shifts in the age of AI, climate and systemic change. So if you’re a curious mind and enjoy a good read, then follow the link below!
As part of this work, I have developed Liminal Fluency™ - A framework describing the human and organisational ability to recognise, inhabit and navigate the transitional spaces between what was and what will be.
Over the past years, navigating transitions - in organisations, in leadership, in identity - kept showing up as the hardest and least understood part of real change. This is also why 70% of large-scale change and transformation programmes fail to meet their objectives - not for lack of strategy, but because the human side of change is consistently underestimated. So I wanted to build a framework around it.
Liminal Fluency™ maps what actually happens when people and organisations move through the liminal phases between what is not anymore and what is not yet. It is grounded in 100+ years of solid research, built from decades of practice and designed for the moments when the old playbooks no longer work - in a world that keeps changing faster than the maps made to navigate it. The first tools and frameworks are live, with more in development. See how this shapes the way I work with organisations and what it means for your transformation.