ARC / Astrid Rapp

Already during her high school and college years in her home town of Hamburg, Germany, Astrid's first hands-on professional experience was obtained in the shipping industry when she took over administrative responsibilities in her father's company and was a regular representative at trade shows for many years.

After earning the equivalent of masters degrees in English and American Literatures, Russian Literature as well as Education from the University of Hamburg Astrid completed post graduate studies of Business Management in an MBA-like program at the WBA Academy in Hamburg and received state certification in business administration and industrial management.

During the course of her literature and language studies Astrid studied abroad at Universities located in Oxford/England, Phoenix/Arizona/United States, Sofia/Bulgaria and St. Petersburg (Leningrad)/Russia.

Internships while studying business administration resulted in an international engagement with her first employer and mentor of many years.

During the first twelve years of her career Astrid was a Chief Financial Officer in permanent positions in the senior management of several corporations in the machinery, beverage and plastic industries as well as in the New Media including three years spent in the United States.

At the turn of the millennium while being the Chief Financial Officer of a telecommunications company Astrid witnessed first-hand the exciting times of the boom, hype and downfall of the new market.

Her very first assignment as a self employed interim manager was achieved as early as in the late nineties when Astrid was sent to a subsidiary in England by her first and former employer as an interim CFO for the first time.

In the year 2000 Astrid established ARC Astrid Rapp Consulting and has been actively engaged internationally since then taking assignments as interim CFO and consultant in the areas of interim management, project management and business English coaching in various industries.

In the early 1990s being the Chief Financial Officer of the American subsidiary of her first employer Astrid managed the relocation of the manufacturing facility from Hicksville, New York to Richmond, Virginia and built up the company from scratch hiring new staff, setting up new structures and implementing a new ERP system.

A similar project came up a few years ago when Astrid in her capacity as an interim CFO carried out the spin-off of a medium sized manufacturer in Bavaria, Germany, including the relocation of the company, setting up of new departments and the pilot implementation of the new web-based ERP system SAP Business byDesign.

A very interesting and complex project sent her to Holland and Poland in her role of interim CFO where she was preparing the structures of the Polish subsidiary of a Dutch group to take over the western European business.

Fate came into play with another project when Astrid was asked a few years ago to join a company on an assignment as interim CFO and that same company that meanwhile had become a subsidiary of an American group turned out to be the other of the two companies she had started with as an intern twenty years earlier.

At the time when Astrid first started taking engagements as an interim manager the idea of assigning interim managers was relatively unknown of in Germany making her one of the pioneers in the area of interim management so to speak and one of the active interim CFOs with the longest experience as an interim manager.

Since 1979 Astrid has been engaged in numerous honorary positions as chairwoman, treasurer or auditor respectively of a tennis club, church choir, symphony chorus, plastic pipe manufacturers associations, alumni and professional associations; currently she is the auditor of the Ambassador Club Hamburg Hanseatic.

She used to play a lot of tennis, nowadays she can preferably be found around golf courses.