If you had to explain your job to a child how would you describe what you do?
Birgit Koenig: I'd say, imagine you have a tree house where you go and play with your friends every summer. Imagine it's a very nice tree house but an old one and you have limited resources in terms of wood and nails. Now if Allianz was a tree house, my job would be to make sure that everyone has a joint plan of how to build the tree house, what we want to achieve and that everyone understands their role on how to actually work on the tree house so that we can reach our tree house plan in time and with the resources we have.
What do you like most about your job?
Koenig: I really like problem solving in teams. I like interacting with people and doing that on a variety of different topics. It is the breadth of the topics that is very thrilling.
What is the one thing you would advise women to do if they aspire to be top managers?
Koenig: Let me give you two. One is stay true to yourself and the other one is stay away from management literature that you can buy at the airport.
