10 Interesting Things About Me
Karin Schroeck-Singh
# 1 – “Where are you from?” is usually the most frequently asked question when people meet me. From my accent they usually can’t figure it out precisely. Let me answer this question in a nutshell: “From a trilingual area called South-Tyrol (Südtirol – Bozen/Bolzano) in Northern Italy where people speak Italian, German and Ladin. By the way, it's the same region that tennis star Jannik Sinner comes from.
# 2 – I was born in Austria in 1971. I was raised in Italy where I spent 31 years, lived for one year in Austria, spent 2 1/2 years in India and 20 years in the UK.
# 3 – I consider myself as a global citizen: reliable and precise like the Germans, hard-working like the Japanese, creative like the Americans, punctual like the Swiss, family-oriented like the Italians, emotional like the Indians, diligent like the Polish and polite like the British.
# 4 – I love cats, but if I were an animal I would be an OCTOPUS. Its 8 tentacles would represent my 8 main skills:
1) Communication/Presentation Skills, 2) Foreign Language Skills (German, English, Italian, little French), 3) Organisational Skills, 4) Creative Thinking Skills, 5) Marketing Skills, 6) Recruitment Skills, 7) Training/Coaching Skills and 8) IT Skills.
# 5 – What makes me happy? Spending quality time with my family (Indian husband and 18 year old daughter), learning a new skill and extending my knowledge, watching Jannik Sinner playing amazing tennis, doing a job that excites me, finding bargains, travelling to new places, surprising people in unexpected moments with things or actions that I know exactly they are going to love!
# 6 – My most favourite hobby? LEARNING new skills or specific knowledge in all its different forms. For example, reading books (biographies, self development, career and business books). However, I would NEVER read novels. Why? Because I feel there is little to learn from it. I also love networking online and offline, enrolling in training courses, watching videos and listening to podcasts.
# 7 – At the age of 13, teachers advised me to follow a vocational path instead of going to college. I didn’t allow anyone to stop me in pursuing what I wanted to do. The book “What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School” written by Mark McCormack inspired me so much, that at the age of 28 I decided to enroll in a Business Administration course at the University of Innsbruck (Austria). An MBA at the University of Leicester (UK) followed soon afterwards. Surely an experience that had an impact on my life and career. I appreciated the opportunity of being exposed to a much more global world.
# 8 – I don’t just love reading other peoples’ books but also writing my own ones. In the past I’ve published the following: “20 Book Ideas for Etiquette Professionals”, “How to strengthen the bond with your child”, “100 Tips – Business Meeting Etiquette”, “200 Etiquette Quotes”, “Worte die beflüegeln-222 Ideen andere zu loben”, “How I got my first 1000 Twitter Followers in 44 days”, “44 Tips for a successful Video Interview”.
# 9 – In 30 years I worked in 3 different countries and gained many different experiences, for example as an Office Manager, Post Clerk, Multilingual Executive Assistant, Recruiter, Market Researcher, German and English Teacher, Business Lecturer, Soft Skills+Business Etiquette Trainer, Operations Manager, Career Coach, Online Content Manager and German Translator. In hindsight, I can say that it was a great enriching experience which allowed me to enlarge my network, to acquire so many different skills (hard and soft skills) and to get insights into several industries and sectors. Since I only have one life, I’m keen to get the most out of it.
# 10 – As a child I grew up in a very sportive family. I had the privilege to participate in so many different sports in my life at an early age. To be precise, from classical ballet (the most gracious sport, being inspired by my mother) to off-road motorbike racing (the riskier sport, being inspired by my father who ran a motorbike business). In between there were many other summer and winter sports that I took part in, some of them on a competitive level.
Sports has taught me many lessons. It helped me to become a more ambitious, persistent, determined, strategic thinking, driven and successful person.
