Following up on our diversity series today, meet Franziska and Vanessa. From the very beginning, these two brilliant women had clear ideas about their professional careers and succeeded in everything they set out to achieve. Both originally Swiss, they are natural team players. At HEMEX, we are delighted to have them on our team. Do you want to know a little more about their lives and how they ended up at HEMEX?
Franziska
“You can reach for the stars if you really want to”
Franziska is a specialist in Marketing and Sales. She was born in Riehen and raised in the Basel countryside. Growing up, she was always surrounded by many people and animals. This had a significant impact on her life because she has a special connection with people and a special passion for animals. Later on, this was reflected in her professional career as she has worked always with and for people in the animal care industry.
Franziska cherishes her childhood and adolescence memories. Besides school, part of her daily routine was to take care of the animals they had at their house, for instance, horses, ponies, sheep, goats, chickens, dogs, cats and even snakes. She had the opportunity to get in touch with different people worldwide that visited her parent’s house. This allowed her to soak up different atmospheres and cultures that inspired her to travel the world.
Interacting with different people and using several languages in an international setting attracted Franziska from the beginning of her professional career. This is why she decided to study and specialize in Marketing and Sales. Immediately after her training, she started to work in the chemical industry, and afterwards, she found that the life-science industry was her passion.
Franziska has built her career by working hard not just in the Marketing and Sales departments but also in logistics and purchasing. She has experience in many leading pharma corporates, but also small companies. She traveled the world as a sales representative and enriched her knowledge and experience whilst interacting with different mindsets. “I only can sell something if I believe in it. And it’s not just about selling; it’s about providing and adding something that is of value and making the counterpart happy”. Franziska is the kind of person who loves being surrounded by inspiring people, people who believe in what they do, and are passionate about their jobs.
She joined HEMEX in August 2018; after working in big corporate for a long time, she decided to go back into a small setting and create something new. Therefore, she decided to join the HEMEX team, where she is a start-up scout, responsible for business development and in charge of Marketing. She strongly believes in the team’s concept; that’s why she explains to HEMEX; “The most I like from our team is that we are very diverse and have lots of fastastic ideas. We are capable of reaching incredible goals. Together we create something wonderful every day, we are on a mission to complete our vision!”. Franziska is one of the core team members, at HEMEX we really appreciate that she is always ready to help everyone find their professional path.
Franziska speaks German, English, Spanish, and French. She loves “anything that is spicy” and reading and hiking are her current hobbies. Franziska strongly believes in justice. For her it is very important to work fairly and do the right thing. We want to finish this inspiring real-life story with Franziska’s quote, which we believe sums her up perfectly.
“Even if somebody treats you unfairly, I would still stand up for this person, why? Because fairness is one of my key values. Together with trust, honesty, and loyalty”
As part of our diversity series, we asked Vanessa to sum up Franziska in one word. She said that for her, Franziska is SPIRITED.
Vanessa
“Proficiency is precious – Passion is priceless.”
Vanessa is a jurist and a lawyer by training. She was born in Zurich’s countryside and grew up downtown in the city where she went to school and later to University. She decided to study Law because she wanted to help people and was very talented in logic and argumentation.
The lawyer career path is not easy, and Vanessa has always been very committed to her studies. She started her Ph.D. Studies in the field of Legal History and Legal Theory at the University of Zurich and the Max Planck Instutite for European Legal History in Frankfurt. a.M., Germany. During this time, she worked as an assistant at the chair for Legal History and Theory at the Law Faculty of University of Lucerne. While finishing the Ph.D., she moved to Bern, and at this point of time, Vanessa had seen how Academics function. “But I was still keen in having a profession in which I could make a difference and add value to another person’s life”, Vanessa tells HEMEX. This is why she decided to take the bar examination and become lawyer. For the admission to the bar examination, jurists need to absolve different internships: Vanessa did a six-month internship at the First Instance Court in Civil and Criminal Law in the Canton of Berne. Later on,Vanessa worked for six months in a middle sized law firm in Muttenz. Following this period, she did another internship at the Legal Service of the cantonal Governement and the Parliament of Basel-Country in Liestal.
Vanessa is a very energetic person, this is why by the time she passed her bar exam, she was already starting to work as a post-doc. In particular, she was the Doctoral School coordinator for the research focus of of the three faculties at University of Lucerne, and the topic was text and normativity. After this experience, Vanessa decided to move back into practicing law, where she worked for some years to build experience. First she worked some time as Deputy Head of Legal Services at Faculty of Law of University of Zurich. Then she worked as an employed lawyer in a small law firm in Zurich until she decided to take two big clients with her and become self-employed. She joined a middle-sized law consortium in Basel but was not satisfied with many of the old-fashioned settings there. And as she always believed in the motto: love it, change it or leave it, she decided that being her own company would be by far better. Her perseverance led to her starting her own law firm. Now, she is an energetic entrepreneur and works to ensure that her clients are safe and stand-ups for them whenever they need her.
She arrived at HEMEX unintentionally, she already knew some of the team, and she admired the work done that HEMEX does. Vanessa tells us, “You can really make a difference. The way HEMEX helps all the start-ups that collaborate closely is very inspiring”. At HEMEX, we also admired Vanessa; for us, she is a unique lawyer. Usually, lawyers are designed to be ambitious and operationally conservative, but Vanessa is very generous, hearty, and transparent. We could not think of a better lawyer to represent HEMEX!
Vanessa speaks German, English, French, and obviously, as the excellent lawyer she also understands Latin. She is also one of the HEMEX team’s sportiest people, as she loves every kind of sport; volleyball, horse riding, tennis, skiing, scuba-diving, skeleton, and even motorbiking! We want to finish this inspiring real-life story with Vanessa’s quote, which we believe sums her up perfectly.
“Even though I am a lawyer, I am an altruistic person. I really want to help my clients and try to understand their situation. That is why I believe, as a lawyer, I have to work tailor-made. This is something extremely important! Every person and every case are different and need to be uniquely addressed.”
As part of our diversity series, we asked Vincenzo to sum up Vanessa in one word. He said that for him, Vanessa is CARING.
About HEMEX
HEMEX was founded as a private investment and consulting company headquartered close to the Basel global life sciences hub. Our primary focus is to bring innovative drugs, medical devices, and in–vitro diagnostics to the market. We specialize in supporting early-stage start-ups, and we offer tailored solutions to accelerate projects into successful and sustainable businesses. Additionally, HEMEX helps and supports start-ups to find non-dilutive and dilutive funding. We are now gaining fast recognition, and this is partly because we are transforming the culture by seamlessly bridging the gap between investors and entrepreneurs.