Recently, an esteemed colleague was thanking me for “courageous openness” with a previous email by me. I have been very happy about this feedback. But I was also asking myself: is it really courageous to address important issues by mail … if there also had been opportunities to speak? Honestly spoken, talking would have been courageous, face to face, eye in eye, vouching for my words. Writing email is…

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” Elbert…

Well … honestly spoken … I appreciate myself. Not always. But again and again. And I admit to enjoying it. I appreciate myself for minor and major achievements. Every time something worked as planned. Every time I kept milestones and budget … or even overachieved. Then, I am as pleased as Punch, deeply proud of myself, and I inwardly tell myself: “Well done, Christian!” No, I do not miss appreciation by others. Most of the time I have been very fortunate having fellows and leaders, who acknowledged and esteemed my contribution … and myself. Hence, I always felt privileged. I never took it as granted, and I know that many others have to go without appreciation by others. But especially then it is even more important to honor yourself, to self-appreciate your performance. For me, the joy about my own success goes along with self-respect; the value I give myself. Frankly spoken, for quite a long time I thought that it would be absolutely common being pleased about own successes. A natural element of intrinsic motivation. Praise has been proven to be the best motivator. By praising myself I motivate myself. And that is how it also always felt for me. And over the years it carried me through various difficult situations. Meanwhile I have learned that self-appreciation is by far common and generally understood. From time to time I meet people having a serious problem with appreciating themselves, appreciating their own performance. But I think we agree that most successes are earned through hard work and are not to be taken as granted. For that reason, it should be well justified being proud of any single success. Not the narcissistic, foppish type of self-praise … but the well-deserved inward self-appreciation for a real performance. No pride which is exaggerating the own person. But joy because you successfully delivered. If I do not appreciate myself and my achievements … why should others…

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees. Michel de…

I developed and provided a medical education program on MF-CTCL disease, supporting the launch of a new treatment product for the rare dermato-oncological disease. The program includes … CLIENT:Actelion Specialty Care Global Business Unit(as an Actelion employee and team member)PROJECT TIME FRAME: February – May…

SAMS (“Saccade Analysis Made Simple”) is an educational app for clinicians on the identification of specific impairments of eye movements (oculomotor test), and helps to earlier diagnose underlying neurological diseases. The tablet-based app guides through systematic qualitative measurements of various eye movements done locally by a physician or nurse. Simultaneously, the app records a video of the patient’s eye movements, and the physician subsequently has the opportunity to share selected recordings with a remote expert for his review. The expert’s feedback is supporting the local physician in developing his skills in the recognition of multiple potential neurological disorders known to be behind eye movement manifestations. As project management lead, I have been responsible for specifying user requirements, application risk management, aligning with legal department for having a compliant set-up, coordinating KOLs involved, the developing agency and caring field force, ensuring continuous improvement, and a scale-up to additional countries. CLIENT:Actelion Specialty Care Global Business Unit(as an employee and member of)PROJECT TIME FRAME: November 2015 – June 2016 (development)June 2016 – EO 2019 (active in…