Pledge 1%'s #WomenWhoLead series celebrates female leaders who are paving the way for the next generation. While our featured leaders come from a variety of backgrounds and industries, they are united in their efforts to promote equality for all women in the workplace. We’ve asked them to share a bit about their journey to success, as well as lessons they’ve learned along the way.
Celia Geering
Head of Sales Europe, rready AG
Zürich, Switzerland
What is your current role? Briefly describe in 1-2 sentences.
As Head of Sales Europe I lead a high-power sales team of four, growing every other month, soon to be seven. Apart from that, I'm still in sales myself covering the German market. My role is about motivating, coaching and making sure everyone can perform on their top!
What’s the best part of your job? What do you enjoy the most?
Well generally, getting up every morning full power ahead empowering all employees in corporations to fulfill their entrepreneurial mindset.
It is also the rready hands on "Born rready" mindset I love, which customers enjoy and find special about us.
Within rready, I love each interaction I have with my colleagues and the team, because they can range from hilarious to sad, to bitter-sweet, angry to loving and happy – and I love each and every moment of it.
We’ve all faced personal and professional challenges these past two years - what motivates you to keep going?
Jumping onto every opportunity that is offered to me. If you can’t stop thinking about it and start making up excuses for why you can’t accept it – That’s the moment to go for it, full speed! So I transferred that into the possibilities we had during the pandemic: I got stuck in Zürich, started my job at rready, moved into a house with five people, made my way to Head of Sales Europe – So, yes I could still go on with my life taking all the right (or wrong and no regrets about them either) decisions in my life before and jumped on the opportunities as soon as I saw them.
Also the examples of numerous KICKBOXERs everyday and their motivation to think outside of the box and chase after their ideas fuels me with energy to be always rready even under the Corona unprecedented times.
What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?
It will sound so basic, nonetheless when I first experienced a case of death, my mum said to me “Never forget, without death there is no life”. Me being a young, naive teenie thinking about this sentence and responding to her “But imagine how amazing it would be if we don’t have to worry about death!” - Well, she laughed at me and let it be for the moment, confident that I will figure it out myself. Well, now I’m here as a 30 year old person, knowing if our life didn’t have an expiration date, we wouldn’t try making the best of the years we have!
What does generosity mean to you?
Generosity means to me giving everyone the space and all possibilities to be their full self and bring it to the table every day. Everyone deserves the opportunity to fulfill their dream life. I want to give everyone the possibility and space to be their most fabulous self. The most generous thing we can do is to meet others with kindness and offer them opportunities.
How do you feel businesses can play a larger role in solving today’s biggest challenges? Do you have any specific stories or examples from your work or colleagues you can share?
By stopping the Bla! Businesses have the greatest minds sitting in their rows doing a job every day, that most people are even bored of. So, we waste human-beings due to bored-outs or unnecessary burnouts.
There is the one question: Why aren’t they using their full brain capacity within their workforce to solve the challenges of today and the future? Honest answer, management being scared to let employees innovate bottom-up, especially because they’re missing out on the right tools to empower each and everyone.
Why? Because often management feels somehow insecure letting employees voice and test their ideas.
Why I know this so well? Because at rready it is the Sales Team's job to bring exactly this culture of employee empowerment and bottom-up innovation to corporates. Bottom-Up Innovation can feel threatening and often they fear it as “too big of a change”.
What we see in companies that take on the challenge of building up a bottom-up movement? They develop new, more sustainable, more inclusive solutions to change the future or prevent us from new risks.
Help2type is a successful example for an inclusive product that was developed by a Swisscom employee. Marcel Roesch is Head of Swisscom’s Film Team, and his project help2type GmbH – a tactile keyboard for smartphones – was born out of his own experience as a person with low vision. It is a tactile keyboard that connects with your smartphone via Bluetooth. With help2type, those with visual impairment or low vision can write on their phones in public without unwantedly sharing their contents.
If you could describe yourself in one word what would that be and why?
Fabulously curious! Easy, because I love life being fabulous and full of new experiences, challenges and people.
If you could pick a song to guide you through 2022, which song would it be?
What are you looking forward to this year? Are there any goals (personal or professional), activities, or experiences you are excited about?
A hell of a ride through very high highs and very low lows and coming out of it on the other end as a grown and crazy person after overcoming the rollercoaster with absolutely fantastic people! It’s going to be a blast.
