When she takes time out for her “reading ritual” at the weekend, she forgets about the world around her. For the rest of the week, Anna Handschuh is all the more committed to a future worth living on this earth: The 31-year-old works as a marketing manager at Triodos in Frankfurt, the German branch of Europe’s leading sustainability bank. An unusual position for a young woman with a master’s degree in cultural management.
“Bank – for me as a teenager that was synonymous with the local savings bank,” she admits. “I was a satisfied customer, but I found it absurd to work in this field.” After her studies, Anna Handschuh was first drawn to marketing at the Frankfurt Schirn Kunsthalle, then to the natural cosmetics manufacturer Speick. Today she develops strategies for launching new banking products, most recently Triodos’ own funds and a current account.
She doesn’t see it as a biographical break. Because a common thread runs through all their jobs: work has to make sense and create added value for others. “The banking business is the bloodstream of the economy,” says Anna Handschuh. “Every day something positive can be done here for people and the environment.” Especially when investments are made in renewable energies, organic farming or sustainable real estate, as is the case with Triodos.
Challenges excite you
In 2009, the “Financial Times” therefore awarded the company the title of “Sustainable Bank of the Year”. Understanding the complexity of a bank, building a team – and doing all of that in the crisis year of 2009 – was a real challenge, admits Anna Handschuh. But that’s exactly what has always appealed to her: as an eleven-year-old, who initiated a Bach sponsorship to clean up the polluted little river behind the school, as a member of the Federation of Business & Professional Women and in the organization of the Equal Pay Day in Stuttgart, whose The goal is fair pay for women.
“It’s no use just being against something without having any counter-suggestions,” she says emphatically. “You also have to contribute something to the solution yourself.” And you can even make money with it. Triodos works like other commercial companies: Customers receive interest on their deposits, employees receive a salary based on the collective agreement.
What they sell, they also live. This includes giving every colleague a company bicycle. Organic tea is drunk for breakfast, and the offices, from the non-toxic carpet to the recyclable office chair, were designed according to building biology aspects. Those who work here share a special attitude to life. “I can’t go home and then behave completely differently,” says Anna Handschuh, who ate “organic” as a child, doesn’t own a car and avoids flying whenever possible. “Only on vacation to Greece, there’s no other way,” she admits. A little weakness must be allowed.
