I was born in East Germany when it was ruled by a totalitarian one-party dictatorship that encouraged everything but imagination and self-actualization. This regime wanted everyone to follow orders and march in step, and it didn’t allow its citizen to travel to democratic countries. Needless to say, I grew up in an environment where I thought everything was limited.
My mom, who raised me as a single parent, got separated from her siblings after the war when they were still children. So, every time my aunts and uncles came to visit us, my imagination to once live in a free country kept growing stronger. One day, my mom received a letter saying that we had 24 hours to leave the country and move to West Germany. This was in response to her sending requests to government officials for many years asking to be reunited with her family. And that was the first time when I experienced the power of persistence and of not giving up on your dreams, no matter what circumstances look like all around you.
Later, when I was a teenager living in Germany, my parents tried to convince me that if I followed societal expectations, as in learning a trade, getting a stable job, and raising a family, I would be happy and without worries. However, none of the options presented to me made me feel passionate or gave me a sense of purpose. My passion was to help others to connect to their personal strengths and to help create a better world. That’s when I decided to immigrate to the U.S. to pursue my passion to help people develop as strong leaders so that they can have a big impact.
While I struggled with learning a new language and parting with everything that was so familiar to me for so long, my passion kept driving my forward. I learned how to build powerful organizations that support people in creating better communities for themselves and their families.