Taking the plunge

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” — Seneca

You may have heard it already, and it was never a secret. Yet, after many wonderful and emotional goodbyes – and one or two new welcomes – I am inclined to write a few words about some important moves in my and my family’s life.

After fifteen successful years, I have now handed over my responsibilities at Etihad to other, very capable people. Together with the company that I had the honour to be a part of from the early beginnings, we have carefully planned this moment over the past months.

My wife Sue, my son Jaxon and I are now going to move the centre of our lives back to Switzerland. The United Arab Emirates have been good to us and I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity we received both for me as a professional and our life as a family. In a way, though, we have never been completely away. While Abu Dhabi has become and always will be our beloved ‘home away from home’ with treasured friendships and associations into the future, our hearts have always remained attached to our homeland too. Christmas with our families and visits to the Montreux Jazz Festival were fixed points in our calendars every year. Holidays in the mountains of the Bernese Oberland were also a must. And we have never given up my wife’s former single-life-apartment in Bassersdorf, which was our retreat at the time when we started to date. It has remained our Swiss home base throughout all the years of living abroad...

Why now – and where to?

Anyone with children knows they tend to turn your life upside down. Our son Jaxon was born in 2016. Since then, we have been thinking about where we want to onboard him for schooling and make a home for him. Although I have always much appreciated the high standards of everyday life in Abu Dhabi and considered them a privilege, I must also admit: My son has made me feel increasingly attached to my native soil. Allow me to be sentimental, but it’s true: The early morning after a rainy night, an autumnal forest, the Swiss mountains and lakes – all this seems to me to be those childhood privileges that I don't want to deprive Jaxon of. Deep inside I always remained a "Seebueb".

So, it seemed like fate when, on one of our visits to Switzerland quite a while ago, I came across a house for sale in the lake-side town of Meilen just outside of Zurich City – at the other end of the very same street where I grew up as a child myself. Perfect for us as a family and for my son Jaxon in particular, we decided to take this opportunity.

With time, I finally realized that I am at the inevitable point in life when you start thinking about where the next steps on your personal path will lead you. I still have the strong ambition to make things happen. And a full energy tank to do so. I am eager to provide new impulses, to break the routine. At the same time, I would also like to take better care of my family and therefore also of myself.

I finally decided to do this from my Swiss home country. I’d be grateful and honoured to put the experience I was so privileged to have gained around the globe to good use for local businesses with my first Swiss advisory and board mandates already committed to. I am particularly keen to support the fascinating start-up scene, which has become the ‘secret sauce’ of my own innovation work over the past decade. The thought of sharing my global experience to the benefit of native businesses and, in a way, to give something back to this country that I feel so close to, is appealing.

Saying so, my international footprint won’t break up and my newly signed international mandates in transportation and beyond, from London to the United Arab Emirates, will keep me being a global citizen. And who knows what other journeys await me in what’s “a small world after all”.

For the next months, though, it’s Family First!

For more concrete steps, stay tuned. In the meantime, my updated profile on here will give you a few hints.