ETH welcomes two new vice presidents
ETH Zurich has expanded its Executive Board from five to seven domains. life presents a profile of the two new vice presidents.
“You bring valuable qualities and skills that fill a gap in the Executive Board. Such all-round diversity is extremely important to me personally,” ETH President Joël Mesot commented at the media conference to announce the expansion of the ETH Executive Board. On 1 November Julia Dannath already joined the ETH Executive Board as the new Vice President for Personnel Development and Leadership, and on 1 January Vanessa Wood takes up office as Vice President for Knowledge Transfer and Corporate Relations.
But who are the two new board members? What motivates them and what are their specific personal and managerial qualities?
“Trust is essential for working together”
“Good managers can be measured by how successfully they are able to create the right overall environment for their staff to grow,” says Julia Dannath. Her first task in her new role as VP is to engage in dialogue with as many ETH members as possible to identify where – and exactly how – management skills and structures can be improved at ETH. At the same time, she is looking forward to the challenges she faces in her domain. “Whenever people work together conflicts naturally arise from time to time. To resolve this, it is crucial to get everyone involved on board as early as possible and to understand the intentions behind the various types of behaviour,” says the 43-year-old expert in transformation advisory.
Dannath has also been tasked with finding ways to make better use of the advantages of the university’s diversity and building up the development opportunities for all career groups. As part of her involvement in the rETHink project, she will also oversee two workstreams: support of professors and organisation of central administrative units and boards.
Organising people according to their strengths
“Trust is essential for working together,” Dannath says with conviction, “and that has nothing to do with direct contact.” As team leader and most recently CEO of an HR consultancy, she has coordinated teams in Zurich, Hamburg and Cologne while providing organisations around the world with support in the areas of personnel development and management culture for more than 12 years. Online collaboration was therefore routine for Dannath, who has a PhD in psychology, well before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Julia is a very good listener and is very skilled at understanding how to organise people according to their strengths,” says Maximilian Buyken, who spent ten years in her team of consultants and has headed her Executive Board staff unit since 1 December. He highlights several particularly attractive aspects of Dannath’s management style: she gives staff plenty of freedom and responsibility, fires them up with her enthusiasm and is very open in dealing with mistakes and new ideas.
“I draw a lot of energy from my work”
Before Dannath started her career in consultancy, she studied for a PhD in “agile knowledge acquisition” at the University of Tübingen, before moving on to work as scientific assistant at the Institute for Behavioural Psychology at ETH Zurich. She then moved back to Germany for family reasons, but her enthusiasm for ETH stayed with her: “I am very taken by the combination of tradition and innovation, as well as the passion that everyone has for their work here.”
As a CEO and mother to three children, her everyday life has been very demanding for years, without allowing much time to unwind: “I draw a lot of energy from my work, however, and from the many amazing people I am surrounded by.” Dannath, originally from Saarland in Germany, actually likes having such a busy lifestyle, as boredom, idleness and solitude are alien to her nature. When she does have some time to herself, she likes to do sport, listen to political podcasts or detective audio books, or read biographies.
Self-confident, independent and compassionate
Aside from her job, family and her relationship with her husband are the most important things for Dannath. Her parents brought her up as a very independent, self-confident and compassionate person, and she tries to do the same for her three sons. As her eldest is currently studying for his final high-school exams (Abitur), he stays at his grandparents in Germany together with his brothers during termtime, while she and her husband will shift the main focus of their lives to Zurich once coronavirus restrictions allow.
Trust and honesty are extremely important for Dannath both professionally and personally. “A continuous dialogue with others, an intensive feedback culture, an implicit assumption that the other person is acting out of good intention, and support for one another through personal difficulties – such an approach engenders trust and loyalty,” of that she is convinced.
Role model and mentor
Vanessa Wood grew up as an only child in Sarasota, Florida. She often spent the weekend in her grandfather’s workshop, where he helped her build her own small sailing boat and electric cars for her Barbie dolls. Later on her physics teacher immediately spotted her interest in how things work and recruited her to the robotics team and gave her individual lessons in quantum mechanics. “I think such strong support and encouragement gave me the confidence to dedicate my career to science, despite the highly competitive environment,” says the 37-year old professor.
She went on to study physics and French literature at Yale University while also working part-time as a translator for the law faculty. After some months, several law professors invited her to their lectures and shortly afterwards she was interning with one of these attorneys, who later became the legal adviser of Barack Obama.
Reaching her goals with consideration and respect
Vanessa Wood strongly believes her success is in part due to many others who have been kind enough to encourage and support her along the way – and she would like to do the same. “Vanessa has an incredible talent for networking and her approach is always considerate and respectful,” Jens Poulsen comments. The 41-year-old has been working as a coordinator at her institute for four years and will become part of her school management team in January. The two got to know each other ten years ago at the ASVZ running training.
Apart from playing the cello, swimming and road cycling, running is Wood’s favourite leisure activity. What she likes best is to take the train to the mountains, leave her laptop in a locker at the station and go for a run. Since she became a mother in July, she also takes her small daughter along in a baby jogger to explore the hiking trails of the Zurich Oberland, where she has now settled with her husband and is currently preparing for her Swiss citizenship test.
First female professor at D-ITET
Vanessa Wood’s first contact with the business world was when her doctorate in electrical engineering at MIT created a spin-off, since acquired by Samsung. Shortly after completing her PhD, she became the first female assistant professor appointed at the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at ETH Zurich, at the young age of 27. “I was really excited when I came to my job interview,” she recalls. “The opportunities to build up a research group here and the proximity to large-scale research facilities at the Paul Scherrer Institute are unique worldwide.”
Vanessa Wood will take up her duties on the ETH Executive Board and continue on with research. No one in her research group doubts she is capable of mastering both roles. “Vanessa has poured all her energy over the past two years into her role as group leader and also department head,” Jens Poulsen says. The fact that she manages to do so many things so well at the same time is due to her composure and her talent for prioritising. Micromanagement is not her style. However, these qualities can sometimes mean you have to wait a little longer for her answers – but that’s easy to forgive, as she herself is a forgiving person, says Poulsen with a smile.
Focus on knowledge transfer and promotion of young people
In her function as vice president, Wood would like to further intensify ETH Zurich's partnerships with industry and make them even easier to manage. "I want to find new ways to facilitate the exchange between industry and ETH members as well as promote flexible models for ETH spin-offs, thus strengthening innovation at ETH and in companies alike and supporting economic development," she says.
It has always been extremely important to Wood that her own research results provide some societal benefit. That’s why one pillar of her research is on lithium ion battery technology. The results from her research have gone into three spin-offs, and the work of her research group has led to the creation of two other spin-offs. In addition, she has set up numerous partnerships with industry players, including BASF. Wood has already won several awards for her strong commitment to knowledge transfer.
Additionally, since joining ETH she has been involved in various initiatives to encourage more women into natural sciences and support them in their career path. The new vice president also wants to use her position to foster a supportive and inclusive environment and hopefully set an example for young people both as role model and mentor. Just as her former physics teacher once did for her.
This article appeared in the current ETH magazine "life"