I PASS THE PEN TO JESSICA KÖPPEL

COMPANY LAWYER JESSICA KÖPPEL

By Kristian van Petersen

What is your name?

Jessica Köppel

Since when have you been employed?

January 1, 2015

What is your position?

Company Lawyer

Where were you born?

I was born and raised in Ellwangen/Jagst in South Germany (Baden Württemberg).

What is your family situation like?

My partner Sebastian and I live together in our small appartment in Bocholt.

What is your best trait?

I can find something positive in most situations and I rarely lose my sense of humor. My experience is that with a smile on your face and a positive attitude, you get a lot further in life.

What is your worst trait?

Unfortunately, I often lack patience with myself and sometimes with others.

What is your favorite food?

That hasn’t changed since I was a child: My favourite dish is “Linsen mit Spätzle” (lentils with a specific sort of pasta) cooked by my grandma. It’s a traditional dish from my home region.

What kind of music do you like to listen to?

I like to listen to many different types of music. Rock, pop and sometimes classical music. However, my long-time favourite is the band “Die Fantastischen Vier” (German rap). They started to make music over 30 years ago and their music has accompanied me through almost all phases of my life.

What are your hobbies?

When I have time, I love to travel. I love exploring new places and want to see as much as I can from the world. This year we have a holiday planned on the US West Coast and we are really looking forward to it. I also enjoy scuba diving while travelling. Besides that, I like meeting up with friends, cooking and I have promised myself to finally start with piano lessons this year.

What can we wake you up at night for?

You better don’t, I need my sleep.

Who would you like to have a biscuit with?

Dr. Angela Merkel.

Do you have a motto or slogan you would like to share with colleagues?

’’Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you’’, by Walt Whitman. This quote is very inspiring to me because I believe

that a positive attitude makes a big difference. Focusing on the positive aspects of life makes it easier to deal with challenging situations.

What dream do you most want to see come true?

I would love to experience that it is possible for all people to live a life according to their wishes and ideas.

What do you like to do on the weekends?

On long weekends we like to travel or visit my family in South Germany. On ‘’normal’’ weekends, we usually start with a lazy Friday evening. Then on Saturday and Sunday I like to be out with friends, cook and go for long walks.

What news has impressed you the most in the past six months?

The conflict in Ukraine. It is unthinkable to me that something like this can still happen in the present day and that we are not able to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.

What is your favorite vacation destination?

There are still many places I would like to visit. So far, my trip to Argentina has impressed me the most. The country is so big and has everything to offer, from the warm north close to the Brazilian border to the glaciers and endless landscapes of Patagonia.

What employer(s) did you have before NEDCON and what position(s) did you hold there?

Before NEDCON, I was a trainee lawyer and went through various stages: With judges, the public prosecutor’s office, with public authorities and at last for half a year in a law firm in Dublin.

Do you remember what your first day at work was like?

Yes, I can still roughly remember that. I got a tour of the office and was introduced to all my colleagues. After that, I tried to find my way around the internal network system, which, to be honest, still challenges me to some extent.

What is/was your biggest challenge at NEDCON?

The greatest challenge for me was getting an overview of our product and the project processes. I have to admit that I was surprised by the complexity and finesse behind our racking systems. Each project is different and comes with its own challenges. This is what makes the work so exciting and never boring.

You moved from the south of Germany to Bocholt. Why did you choose to do so and how did you experience it?

After I had been offered a job at NEDCON, I started looking for a suitable place to live. That turned out to be Bocholt. I was lucky enough to find connections and make friends quickly. I also enjoyed a very warm welcome from my colleagues at NEDCON, which made it easy for me to settle in quickly. So the process of moving was quite easy for me. Now, after more than seven years, I can say that I have found myself a new home here.

What do you like about working at a Dutch company and what do you find less great as a German? Are there things you had trouble getting used to?

What I like very much is the relaxed way of interacting with each other. In many German

The question from Renata Pinedo…

What is your favorite memory of working at NEDCON?

The best memories are the many moments when I could laugh with my colleagues. The business trips are particularly worth mentioning here. It’s always fun to get to know colleagues a little better in private, which works best when we travel together.

companies, things were a bit more formal and hierarchical a few years ago. That is changing more and more now. However, before working at NEDCON, I never experienced that all colleagues were on first-name basis with each other. But I quickly got used to that. What I still can’t get used to is the fact that milk is served at lunch. This is a culinary peculiarity that remains strange to me.

Which project has stuck out to you the most and why?

That was the Siemens Henkel project. I was involved from the very beginning and was also part of the sales process. The contract negotiations in Vienna were challenging, but also a lot of fun. Last December, at the end of the project, I was invited to be there during the acceptance and to take a look at the facility. That was quite a highlight and a nice personal completion of the project, which we were able to realise successfully with a lot of team spirit and dedication from all departments.

What other position within NEDCON would you like to fill for a week?

I would like to work in the production facility for a week and take a closer look at the manufacturing process. I would find it exciting to learn more about the processes and individual steps from the steel strip to the finished components.

If you were a director of NEDCON for one day, what would you do or change?

That’ s a tough question and one day would be far too limited to get an overall-overview in order to then initiate appropriate changes. Therefore, in this one day, I would focus on defining a strategy to ensure that our subcontractors are also fit for the upcoming, ever-increasing challenges for sustainability and Health & Safety.

What will NEDCON look like in 5 years? What is the biggest change you predict?

I think that in the coming years we have to focus more on environmental protection and adapt our processes in this regard. As we want to grow further, I also foresee that in five years’ time we will be working in a new office complex where there will be space for more people and we will also have flex offices for making it easier to work collaboratively.

I pass the pen on to…

Roman Bleha.

And I would like to ask him the following…

Our projects are getting bigger and bigger and the requirements, e.g. environmental regulations, are getting stricter and stricter. What are the main challenges for production that you see in the coming years and how do we want to approach them? ■

The mystery of connection

For almost 12 years now I have been sitting in the stands together with a friend at the home matches of soccer club De Graafschap. Acquaintances regularly ask me how I’ve managed to stay so long there, as a soccer fan. And they don’t say it out loud but the pitying look in their eyes says: ‘at that club that can’t play soccer’. We have also bought a season ticket for the coming year. So that we can keep chilling in the stands and we don’t have to miss a game.

And suddenly there was a scarf of De Graafschap on all our desks with a message. NEDCON has become the official sponsor of De Graafschap. This soccer club is not often associated with achieving success, so it still came as a surprise to me. So what was the reason for NEDON to choose a partnership with De Graafschap? The mystery of De Graafschap’s appeal... It sounds like a nice subject for this column. Fortunately, there was also room again for a lighter subject. Corona kept his head down and all of Europe breathed a sigh of relief at the end of February. But unfortunately soon the breath cauht. Russia carried out a massive invasion of Ukraine and mass boycotts followed. The world in disaster.

Surely this new crisis cannot go unmentioned in the column? Directly or indirectly, it affects almost everyone in the world and therefore also NEDCON. My age may play a role in the doubt I feel. After all, I was born in October 1962. This month is known as the month of the ‘Cuban missile crisis’. The world was on the brink of nuclear war. The Cuban crisis was quickly defused but that did not prevent the 30 years that followed from East and West being diametrically opposed to each other. The situation is different now, of course, but East and West again seems to appear two deeply divided worlds. It is not very strange that because of this war and the boycotts, gloomy images from decades ago come to the surface, is it? But let me be complete: there wasn’t much we could do about the cause of the gloomy worldview at the time, except protest occasionally. But there wasn’t really any gloominess itself. It was more a time of lots of music, fun, freedom and unlimited possibilities.

Back to NEDCON, the organization had to respond to a great deal of uncertainty. It even had to take measures that had a significant impact on its clients. These are not measures you like to take. But let’s remain optimistic. I have little knowledge of economics and in this blissful ignorance I still see a half-full glass. After all, isn’t economics about distribution of scarcity. And as an employee of NEDCON, when I think of scarcity I think of stockpiling and therefore ‘storage’. It just so happens that NEDCON understands both ‘distribution’ and ‘storage’. In a new world with great economic changes, even filled with boycotts, there are undoubtedly new opportunities.

Having raised this positive outlook, I am still left with a problem in this column. How can you insert a war and boycotts into a column, in which you also want to deal with the mystery of De Graafschap’s appeal? That is of course not possible. You always fall short in the misery that the war has caused. An attempt to do so is more of an appeal to a flexible thought process.

The historical connection of Ukraine and Russia is so great that Russia sees the capital Kiev as the cradle of both Russia and Ukraine. How is now a mystery to me, but we can only hope that the connection can one day be felt again positively by both parties. And thus can take the world a little further towards less division.

I have not been able to unravel the mystery of De Graafschap’s appeal. But isn’t the beauty of a mystery that it remains a mystery? ■

By Kasper Vrijbloed