Freelancer: Artificial Intelligence | Agentic Generative AI | Product Owner | Digital Transformation | Business Process Digitization | Product Strategy | UX Desig

Freiberufler / Selbstst�ndiger

Remote-Arbeit

Verf�gbar ab: 18.03.2025

Verf�gbar zu: 100%

davon vor Ort: 50%

Top-Skills

Artificial Intelligence

Strategy

Digitale Transformation

Project Management

Scrum Product Owner

Business Development

Gesch�ftsprozess

Gesch�ftsprozessanalyse

Gesch�ftsprozessmodellierung

Marketing

Marketingkonzept

Marketing/Medien

Marketing Controlling

KPI

OKR

Projektmanagement/Projektleitung

B2C

Automation/Steuerung

Sprachen

German

English

French

Italian

Spanish

Korean

Einsatzorte

St�dte

Cologne (+50km) D�sseldorf (+50km) Frankfurt am Main (+50km) Hamburg (+50km) Berlin (+50km) Koblenz am Rhein (+100km) Luxembourg (+50km)

L�nder

Deutschland

Remote-Arbeit

m�glich

Projekte

2025 ? today: - LOTA development for Agentic AI

Role: Member
Customer: on request

2024 ? today: AI solutions for the travel, logistics and financial services industries

Role: Co-Founder
Customer: on request

Tasks:

Leading Provider of vertical agentic ai solutions for the travel, logistics and financial services industry
AWS Startup Program and NVIDIA Developer program partner
Deutsche Telekom Techboost Laureate
Foundational Technologies for multiagentic transaction frameworks, peer-to-peer agentic transactions, and industry specific ontologies

2014 ? 2022: LLM-applications

Role: Co-Founder
Customer: on request

Tasks:

Pioneer in Enterprise grade LLM applications
Vertical ML solutions for Industrial, Energy, Insurance and Information Technology clients
Strategic Partnership with McKinsey

2012 - 2024: Launched National Geographic Expeditions Program

Role: Founder & CEO
Customer: on request

Tasks:

Launched National Geographic Expeditions Program to 30 destinations worldwide for the Central European Source Market
Launched leading Magazine for sustainable Travel, For That Moment Magazine
developed ambitious sustainable Travel programs in partnerships with Conservation International, Pro Wildlife, Viva con Agua, National Geographic
highest rates of social media and mobile distribution in the industry
highest net operating revenue per pax in the industry
recognized by PhocusWright and FVW as leading innovator for online travel
3x growth during Covid, successful restructuring and relaunch after extreme company crisis due to delayed covid subsidies and negative press issues

2011 - 2017: Technology development

Role: Managing Director
Customer: on request

Tasks:

Innovation Hub
developed technology for Social Data/ Social Distribution (patents pending)

2006 - 2011: various

Role: Co-Founder and Managing Director (CEO)
Customer: on request

Tasks:

leading portal for licensed video content in Europe and Turkey, 25 Mil. Unique visitors per month at its peak, 2nd largest after Hulu in the US, operating in 8 countries
secured > 40 Mil. ? in Funding and Media investment from Burda Group, Deutsche Telekom AG, Str�er Group
secured licensing partnerships and agreements with major hollywood studios and labels including Warner, Disney, CBS, NBC, Universal, EMI
secured distribution partnerships with TV divisions of Samsung, Philips, Sony, Microsoft and leading Set Top Box providers
secured landmark copyright decision by the High Court in Hamburg
company acquired by Burda in 2010/2011

2005 ? 2011: various

Role: CEO, Managing Partner
Customer: on request

Tasks:

seed investment/ company building venture operation
Co-Founding investor in Qype, acquired by Yelp, Inc (2012)
Co-Founder of webtravel, acquired by Bewotech (2008)
Founding Investor in Social Fashion Company (armedangels brand)
Founding Investor in mobile couponing platform Coupies
Co-Founding Investor in e-Commerce company Avocadostore
Co-Founding Investor in shopping review alatest AB
Founding Investor in mobileview AG, acquired by DTMS (2005)
exited 90% of portfolio, total return 3.2x

2011: Management

Tasks:

Management Buyout of agency division by management
exit from software/ agency business and focus on ventures

2007 ? 2010: various

Role: Executive Chairman

Tasks:

operations run by team of 3 Managing Directors

2001 ? 2007: various

Role: Managing Director (CEO)
Customer: on request

Tasks:
Strong profile as software provider and marketing agency in one Expansion to become the number 1 independent agency in Europe fastest growing interactive services group

1999 ? 2002: various

Role: Co-Founder, Board Member
Customer: on request

Tasks:
Pioneer in interactive TV formats

1999 ? 2001: business development

Role: Managing Director (CEO)

Tasks:

Social algorithm-based bookmarking and search engine
established in 16 countries and 10 languages
secured largest round of venture funding for a german startup in 1999
integrated into leading search Engines Altavista, Lycos, T-Online
deep business development partnership with Bertelsmann Group
failed IPO in October 2000
Pivoted to leading knowledge management tool for Enterprise Intranets (acquired by denkwerk in 2002)

1998 ? 1999: pattern recognition and pattern matching for picture databases

Role: Co-Founder, CEO

1996 ? 2000: various

Role: Managing Director

1995 ? 1996: various

Role: Independent New Media Consultant
Customer: various

1994 ? 1995: various

Role: CEO, Chairman
Customer: on request

1992 ? 1994: Consulting

Role: Co-founder/ Managing Director
Customer: OSCAR GmbH, Cologne (Germany)

1990 ? 1992: Research

Role: Assistant to the Managing Director
Customer: GESC a.s.b.l., Louvain/Brussels, Belgium; Rostock, Leipzig, Germany

Tasks:

Research and University of Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium
Transition Consulting to East German/ East European companies

Aus- und Weiterbildung

2024 ? 2025
Caltech University
Postgraduate Program in AI and Machine Learning

2024 ? 2025
Harvard University CS50
Artificial Intelligence with Python

2024
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT xPro Degree
Designing and Building Ai Products and Services

2024
IBM, Python for Data Science

2000
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Entrepreneurship Development Program

1996
Harvard Program for Asian International Relations Seoul, South Korea

1992 ? 1996
University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Law Studies

Emphasis: Business and International Law, IP & Software Law
completed university studies, without state bar exam to focus on entrepreneurship & consulting work

1990 ? 1992
Universit� Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France
Masters Studies ?Maitrise en Droit? (LLM)

Emphasis: German and French Law, International Law
Opted for German State Exam Program in 1992

1990 ? 1992
Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, Scholarship

1990
Winner of the Bundeswettbewerb Fremdsprachen, German national competition for foreign language proficiency

1990
Bi-Lingual International Baccalaureate in German and French
Mention Tr�s Bien, Bac C

Kompetenzen

Top-Skills

Artificial Intelligence Strategy Digitale Transformation Project Management Scrum Product Owner Business Development Gesch�ftsprozess Gesch�ftsprozessanalyse Gesch�ftsprozessmodellierung Marketing Marketingkonzept Marketing/Medien Marketing Controlling KPI OKR Projektmanagement/Projektleitung B2C Automation/Steuerung

Produkte / Standards / Erfahrungen / Methoden

Professional Background: Non-Executive Positions (further information on request)

Implementing Radical Digital Change in Large Organizations

The following situations included building a unit within the framework of large organizations or with decision-making influence from large stakeholders. In all these cases, a digital business unit had to grow from a handful of people to several hundred employees, often under severe pressure to perform and with contrarian influences.
- As key partner in the Nokia sense, denkwerk was effectively established as an insourced department within the national and international divisions of Nokia. The relationship lasted 10 years and included more than 50 product launches
- As a key strategic partner, many challenges in organizational decision making had to be overcome to launch the e-commerce portal evita, the mail service epost, and several digital signature projects
- Sevenload was at the center of organizational decision making around the relaunch of T-Online, the launch of T-Entertain and entertain 2.0, the group?s broadband and licensing activities. Tensions between national market organizations and the Products & Innovation division running to the board level had to be overcome.
- Reporting to the Board, sevenload navigated several corporate shifts and board reshuffles, including the advent of Paul-Bernhard Kallen as CEO, which all had impact on decisions and budgets for the digital division and thus for sevenload. The company was also part of a strategic partnership with Dogan Group of Turkey.
- In a decade-long partnership, denkwerk was instrumental in establishing the e-commerce activities of Thomas Cook and growing these activities from 35k ?/Quarter (1997) to its present level. Total revenue generated for Thomas Cook is in excess of 1 Bil. ?. Projects had to be ushered through 14 different brands, in partnerships with Lufthansa, Condor, and other technical providers and diverse parts of the organization (IT, product management, sourcing, marketing, distribution, controlling) had to be convinced to support the change to a more digitally enabled process. Legacy systems, some dating to the 1970s, had to be integrated. These challenges included participating in top management strategy processes.
- Launch of an innovative test product as a tablet PC as part of the group?s efforts in multimedia diversification as early as 2003.

Digital Transformation of Travel & Tourism
The following work environments gave ample opportunity to cover Digital Transformation Strategy, Marketing, consumer preferences, and IT challenges in the Travel and Airline Industries

Digital Transformation in FMCG and Retail

Within the framework of the service units of denkwerk group, the following projects and challenges were relevant
- Establishing the armedangels brand as a new fashion brand with a ?sustainable, but hip? approach and online marketing focus required harmonizing offline traditional retail, online shop, and social media activities.
- Roll Out of international order platform for retail markets in the field in 12 European countries. The project took 2 years and required not only surmounting technology challenges, but first and foremost navigating internal decision-making processes and gaining the support of local teams in each region.
- In executing the digital marketing and e-commerce retail strategies for both companies, in-depth analysis of consumer patterns and behavior had to be analyzed and understood and catered to in appealing consumer applications. Projects had to avoid cannibalization, reinforce existing distribution channels and convince internal departments.
- In accompanying the relaunch and roll-out of several non-food FMCG (cosmetics and health), tensions between credibility in the marketplace and to the customer and the limitations of product configurability had to be taken into account. Projects were monitored on detailed retail KPI.
- Faced with a complex corporate structure, isolated and incompatible technology solutions and the organizational limitations of OBIs Franchise system, executing a group wide digital strategy required strong communication skills and a dedicated, step by step approach.
- The major challenge in this client relationship was to establish a common reference product database and establishing an insourcing process for the editorial management of the product database and ecommerce sites.
- The challenge of branding a low interest commodity by positioning the product in customer centric usage scenarios (recipes, seasonal campaigns, etc..)

Einsatzorte

St�dte

Cologne (+50km) D�sseldorf (+50km) Frankfurt am Main (+50km) Hamburg (+50km) Berlin (+50km) Koblenz am Rhein (+100km) Luxembourg (+50km)

L�nder

Deutschland

Remote-Arbeit

m�glich

Projekte

2025 ? today: - LOTA development for Agentic AI

Role: Member
Customer: on request

2024 ? today: AI solutions for the travel, logistics and financial services industries

Role: Co-Founder
Customer: on request

Tasks:

Leading Provider of vertical agentic ai solutions for the travel, logistics and financial services industry
AWS Startup Program and NVIDIA Developer program partner
Deutsche Telekom Techboost Laureate
Foundational Technologies for multiagentic transaction frameworks, peer-to-peer agentic transactions, and industry specific ontologies

2014 ? 2022: LLM-applications

Role: Co-Founder
Customer: on request

Tasks:

Pioneer in Enterprise grade LLM applications
Vertical ML solutions for Industrial, Energy, Insurance and Information Technology clients
Strategic Partnership with McKinsey

2012 - 2024: Launched National Geographic Expeditions Program

Role: Founder & CEO
Customer: on request

Tasks:

Launched National Geographic Expeditions Program to 30 destinations worldwide for the Central European Source Market
Launched leading Magazine for sustainable Travel, For That Moment Magazine
developed ambitious sustainable Travel programs in partnerships with Conservation International, Pro Wildlife, Viva con Agua, National Geographic
highest rates of social media and mobile distribution in the industry
highest net operating revenue per pax in the industry
recognized by PhocusWright and FVW as leading innovator for online travel
3x growth during Covid, successful restructuring and relaunch after extreme company crisis due to delayed covid subsidies and negative press issues

2011 - 2017: Technology development

Role: Managing Director
Customer: on request

Tasks:

Innovation Hub
developed technology for Social Data/ Social Distribution (patents pending)

2006 - 2011: various

Role: Co-Founder and Managing Director (CEO)
Customer: on request

Tasks:

leading portal for licensed video content in Europe and Turkey, 25 Mil. Unique visitors per month at its peak, 2nd largest after Hulu in the US, operating in 8 countries
secured > 40 Mil. ? in Funding and Media investment from Burda Group, Deutsche Telekom AG, Str�er Group
secured licensing partnerships and agreements with major hollywood studios and labels including Warner, Disney, CBS, NBC, Universal, EMI
secured distribution partnerships with TV divisions of Samsung, Philips, Sony, Microsoft and leading Set Top Box providers
secured landmark copyright decision by the High Court in Hamburg
company acquired by Burda in 2010/2011

2005 ? 2011: various

Role: CEO, Managing Partner
Customer: on request

Tasks:

seed investment/ company building venture operation
Co-Founding investor in Qype, acquired by Yelp, Inc (2012)
Co-Founder of webtravel, acquired by Bewotech (2008)
Founding Investor in Social Fashion Company (armedangels brand)
Founding Investor in mobile couponing platform Coupies
Co-Founding Investor in e-Commerce company Avocadostore
Co-Founding Investor in shopping review alatest AB
Founding Investor in mobileview AG, acquired by DTMS (2005)
exited 90% of portfolio, total return 3.2x

2011: Management

Tasks:

Management Buyout of agency division by management
exit from software/ agency business and focus on ventures

2007 ? 2010: various

Role: Executive Chairman

Tasks:

operations run by team of 3 Managing Directors

1999 ? 2002: various

Role: Co-Founder, Board Member
Customer: on request

Tasks:
Pioneer in interactive TV formats

1999 ? 2001: business development

Role: Managing Director (CEO)

Tasks:

Social algorithm-based bookmarking and search engine
established in 16 countries and 10 languages
secured largest round of venture funding for a german startup in 1999
integrated into leading search Engines Altavista, Lycos, T-Online
deep business development partnership with Bertelsmann Group
failed IPO in October 2000
Pivoted to leading knowledge management tool for Enterprise Intranets (acquired by denkwerk in 2002)

1998 ? 1999: pattern recognition and pattern matching for picture databases

Role: Co-Founder, CEO

1996 ? 2000: various

Role: Managing Director

1995 ? 1996: various

Role: Independent New Media Consultant
Customer: various

1994 ? 1995: various

Role: CEO, Chairman
Customer: on request

1992 ? 1994: Consulting

Role: Co-founder/ Managing Director
Customer: OSCAR GmbH, Cologne (Germany)

1990 ? 1992: Research

Role: Assistant to the Managing Director
Customer: GESC a.s.b.l., Louvain/Brussels, Belgium; Rostock, Leipzig, Germany

Tasks:

Research and University of Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium
Transition Consulting to East German/ East European companies

Aus- und Weiterbildung

Emphasis: Business and International Law, IP & Software Law
completed university studies, without state bar exam to focus on entrepreneurship & consulting work

1990 ? 1992
Universit� Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France
Masters Studies ?Maitrise en Droit? (LLM)

Emphasis: German and French Law, International Law
Opted for German State Exam Program in 1992

Kompetenzen

Top-Skills

Produkte / Standards / Erfahrungen / Methoden

Professional Background: Non-Executive Positions (further information on request)

Implementing Radical Digital Change in Large Organizations

The following situations included building a unit within the framework of large organizations or with decision-making influence from large stakeholders. In all these cases, a digital business unit had to grow from a handful of people to several hundred employees, often under severe pressure to perform and with contrarian influences.
- As key partner in the Nokia sense, denkwerk was effectively established as an insourced department within the national and international divisions of Nokia. The relationship lasted 10 years and included more than 50 product launches
- As a key strategic partner, many challenges in organizational decision making had to be overcome to launch the e-commerce portal evita, the mail service epost, and several digital signature projects
- Sevenload was at the center of organizational decision making around the relaunch of T-Online, the launch of T-Entertain and entertain 2.0, the group?s broadband and licensing activities. Tensions between national market organizations and the Products & Innovation division running to the board level had to be overcome.
- Reporting to the Board, sevenload navigated several corporate shifts and board reshuffles, including the advent of Paul-Bernhard Kallen as CEO, which all had impact on decisions and budgets for the digital division and thus for sevenload. The company was also part of a strategic partnership with Dogan Group of Turkey.
- In a decade-long partnership, denkwerk was instrumental in establishing the e-commerce activities of Thomas Cook and growing these activities from 35k ?/Quarter (1997) to its present level. Total revenue generated for Thomas Cook is in excess of 1 Bil. ?. Projects had to be ushered through 14 different brands, in partnerships with Lufthansa, Condor, and other technical providers and diverse parts of the organization (IT, product management, sourcing, marketing, distribution, controlling) had to be convinced to support the change to a more digitally enabled process. Legacy systems, some dating to the 1970s, had to be integrated. These challenges included participating in top management strategy processes.
- Launch of an innovative test product as a tablet PC as part of the group?s efforts in multimedia diversification as early as 2003.

Within the framework of the service units of denkwerk group, the following projects and challenges were relevant
- Establishing the armedangels brand as a new fashion brand with a ?sustainable, but hip? approach and online marketing focus required harmonizing offline traditional retail, online shop, and social media activities.
- Roll Out of international order platform for retail markets in the field in 12 European countries. The project took 2 years and required not only surmounting technology challenges, but first and foremost navigating internal decision-making processes and gaining the support of local teams in each region.
- In executing the digital marketing and e-commerce retail strategies for both companies, in-depth analysis of consumer patterns and behavior had to be analyzed and understood and catered to in appealing consumer applications. Projects had to avoid cannibalization, reinforce existing distribution channels and convince internal departments.
- In accompanying the relaunch and roll-out of several non-food FMCG (cosmetics and health), tensions between credibility in the marketplace and to the customer and the limitations of product configurability had to be taken into account. Projects were monitored on detailed retail KPI.
- Faced with a complex corporate structure, isolated and incompatible technology solutions and the organizational limitations of OBIs Franchise system, executing a group wide digital strategy required strong communication skills and a dedicated, step by step approach.
- The major challenge in this client relationship was to establish a common reference product database and establishing an insourcing process for the editorial management of the product database and ecommerce sites.
- The challenge of branding a low interest commodity by positioning the product in customer centric usage scenarios (recipes, seasonal campaigns, etc..)

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Einsatzorte

Einsatzorte

Projekte

Projekte

Aus- und Weiterbildung

Aus- und Weiterbildung

Kompetenzen

Kompetenzen

Top-Skills

Produkte / Standards / Erfahrungen / Methoden

Einsatzorte

Einsatzorte

Projekte

Projekte

Aus- und Weiterbildung

Aus- und Weiterbildung

Kompetenzen

Kompetenzen

Top-Skills

Produkte / Standards / Erfahrungen / Methoden

Vertrauen Sie auf Randstad

Fragen?

Rufen Sie uns an +49 89 500316-300 oder schreiben Sie uns:

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