It was a great pleasure for the MBA team to welcome back Kerstin Keteci as guest speaker for the latest session of the Guest in Classroom series. Kerstin graduated from the MBA in 2011 and afterwards went back to her previous employer, the Robert Bosch GmbH.
Kerstin started off her talk with a resume of herself and an overview on her different career steps. After her bachelor degree she worked as Marketing and Communications Manager at Bosch’s Automotive Aftermarket Division before joining the MBA program at Pforzheim University from 2009-2011. During her studies she took the chance to do a semester abroad at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC in the US which further broadened her horizon and in the same time made her realized the strengths of the MBA in Pforzheim such as small class size and interculturality. Before graduating from the MBA she did an internship at Bosch in the Strategic Marketing and Product Management field. Kerstin emphasized the importance of using internships as a door opener to companies and as a great networking tool. In her case it payed off when in the same year she got the job as a Project Leader in Strategic Marketing Diesel Systems. Another thing that Kerstin learned during her studies in Pforzheim is to “take a chance to challenge yourself” and try out new things. This is something that helped her to pursue and forward her career within Bosch where today she is working as a Strategy Scout Market & Sales Planning in Mobility Solutions.
In the second part of her presentation Kerstin presented the Bosch group with its four business sectors mobility solutions, industrial technology, energy and building technology and consumer goods of which the automotive sector is still the biggest one. Kerstin described the different processes in the market and sales planning area in which she is working. With its forecasts for the next eight years the department is working on long term strategies which are the basis for the production and business planning. Kerstin also mentioned the challenges of bringing the ideas of the planning division and the management board together. Since the planning processes at Bosch are very detailed and elaborate and in regard of the upcoming crises Kerstin and her colleagues are searching for new ways and tools to ameliorate the planning processes. In the near future it is predicted that Bosch will face extensive structural changes, also due to the transformation in the automotive industry, that need to be communicated and implemented now already so that the company will keep its position as one of the big players in the business world.    
Kerstin ended her presentation with some recommendations for the current students such as “take the most out of the MBA experience and network wherever you can”, “pro-actively pursue your career. Do not wait until others want to promote you” or “be open for and try to continuously learn about new topics”. Thanks Kerstin, for being our guest!
Text / photos: MBA