“I got my bachelor's in Emden. My dream was then go on to a practical, international master’s degree back home and IMS at FH Münster was just the ticket,” said Sarah, a native of Münster. Others often pointed out Sarah’s passion for marketing. “After graduating school, I was traveling with a friend and we were in Costa Rica. We were sitting on the beach and she said, ‘Actually, Sarah, marketing is totally your thing, you're so creative, you can motivate and captivate people’,” said the master student, who particularly values the small learning groups, the personal contact and the solidarity among fellow students in her degree program.

In addition to her master's degree, Sarah started as a student assistant in event management at TAFH Münster GmbH, the innovation and project development agency of our university, which acts as an interface to companies and organizations. “This quickly turned into something more and now I am the project coordinator for the international xRegions project, in which representatives from Brazil, United Kingdom, Chile, the USA and Germany have joined forces,” said Sarah. The goal of the project is to create an international network of universities and their ecosystems. “’xRegions’ brings together students, alumni, startups, regions and higher education institutions around the world. I personally find the cross-cultural cooperation very valuable—and also seeing the different points of view of our project partners from all over the world. Everyone was here in Münster this summer and we all made international friends,” Sarah explained.

These friendships will continue to be maintained and deepened. The same goes for the “Moving the Cities” international entrepreneurship week in Brazil, which Sarah helped organize with the xRegions team. “This year, we are 150 students from 12 universities from all over the globe who are working together in a hybrid format to find solutions to the global challenge SDG11-sustainable cities and communities,” said the 25-year-old. “I’m proud to be able to take on such a responsibility so soon. My studies relating directly to my job and my past travels to South America are the perfect basis for it.”

The project coordinator can always turn to the multidisciplinary project team for support. “The work environment is extremely important to me. The team around me has to be right and that’s what it is at FH Münster. I have a lot of freedom but just as much grounding and a ton of support in terms of ‘you can do both a master’s and a job’. And that’s not something I take for granted,” explained Sarah, who is writing her master’s thesis on international dynamics at ‘xRegions’ and, in doing so, stepping a bit out of her comfort zone—just the kind of thing that is important in a career like hers.

By Rena Ronge