Write us a message
What does the career path to a partner role at torq.partners look like and what makes working here so special for employees? We talked about these and many other topics in our interview with Alina Nauen, who has been a Principal at torq.partners for around one and a half years and was the first employee in the company to take the important step of becoming a Partner. In our interview, she provides insights into the opportunities and challenges of her role and explains her vision for healthy, value-oriented company growth.
I started my career in a bank. I then worked for many years in management positions in the finance departments of various start-ups and scale-ups in Berlin. In between, I was also able to gain experience in internal auditing. However, I always ended up back in a CFO or Head of Finance role.
After my last company was closed following a decision by the investor, I was looking for a position from which I could gain as much as possible. That's exactly what I found at torq.partners: the prospect of getting to know many different companies through project work and being able to develop quickly convinced me.
What I like best is the cooperation and helpful interaction between colleagues. Working in a large team means that when challenges arise, there is always someone who has experienced a similar problem and can support you with their experience. We also maintain an open feedback culture in which it is possible to speak up if something has not gone well. The exchange is always respectful.
I also like the variety in my work. I lead a team of talented consultants who all work on different projects with different problems, while at the same time I am on the road with my clients as an interim CFO.
At the beginning, I worked exclusively on projects for six months and took over the management there. That was a very intensive time, as I took on a large number of customers due to a number of staff departures. However, I was then quickly given responsibility for a more comprehensive project, which took up most of my time.
However, in our project work, you are not usually scheduled for 40 hours. This gives you the opportunity to work on other topics on the side. That's how I ended up taking over a team of four at the start of the year. I also recently became a partner at torq.partners.
On my way to becoming a team lead, I was supported by the leadership program. As team leads, we have regular exchanges with the HR department to discuss acute issues in the team. We also had leadership training sessions in which we looked at challenging situations and were taught theoretical knowledge about the leadership approach at torq.partners.
This year saw the launch of the Partner Development Program, in which a handful of principals took part. It consisted of three pillars: Firstly, there was partner shadowing, where we accompanied each partner individually for a day. This gave us an understanding of what it means to be a partner and how different this can be. The second pillar was a business therapy in which we had group coaching sessions that focused on approachability, empathy and communication and helped us to get to know ourselves and our own external impact better. That was a real highlight from my point of view. The third pillar was a skills development program in which we learned various hard skills. The program lasted around nine months in total and really brought us together as a group.
I had my ongoing projects, my internal team and an additional development program event every two to three weeks, each of which took up a day. I would see this double burden as a challenge, but not exclusively in a negative sense. Sometimes it's important to broaden your horizons and increase your workload in order to gain new experiences.
There are so many! One area that interests me is organizational development, for example in the direction of coaching. I can well imagine supporting companies in building effective team structures and optimizing cooperation in groups. I think there is a lot of potential there.
I would also be interested in taking on a supervisory board position, albeit in the medium to long term.
I want torq.partners to enjoy healthy growth, as I still see a lot of potential in the market. It is important to me to live and develop our values - courage, commitment, respect and responsibility - and to communicate them to every new employee. In this way, we can shape our path together. I want to make an active contribution to ensuring that our development is always in line with our values.
Work plays such an important role in our lives that I believe everyone should be able to be the best version of themselves there too. For me, this includes leading a healthy lifestyle and being able to balance out stressful phases. I think it's important that each of us can live this in our everyday lives and I want to work towards this. After all, satisfied employees are the key to healthy growth.
I want to actively contribute to ensuring that our development is always in line with our values.
I'm really happy about that. For me personally, this is an important and big step. It was wonderful to see how warmly and sincerely all the women congratulated me. Their joy at my success was really palpable. Being the first woman on the panel also has an external impact that should not be underestimated. My vision is to inspire and encourage other women to empower themselves.
torq.partners has undergone a major transformation in terms of its corporate values over the past year. Among other things, this has resulted in an initiative that deals with socially important issues that lie outside our day-to-day consulting work. As part of this, I set up a working group for women at torq.partners, which currently consists of five members. Our aim is to promote women in the company and give them the impetus to become more self-confident and stand up for themselves.
To this end, we have launched a dinner series. In the first version, we focused on the topic of "How do women invest?" and collected and shared information on various asset classes in advance. I was impressed by how positively this was received. The event provided an authentic space in which the participants spoke openly about their views on investing. I think everyone took away good ideas from the dinner on how they can reposition themselves in this area in order to be and remain financially independent.
Equal rights should always play a role in all company processes. In recruiting, it is important to design the candidate pool in such a way that men and women are equally represented. This can be achieved through targeted employer branding and an approach via various channels. I think that is the basis for creating equality.
In addition, measures to promote women should be implemented in day-to-day business, for example through leadership and negotiation training. It is still a problem that women do their work in silence. They achieve great results, but may not talk about them. Creating a platform that enables good performance to be made visible is a great lever for creating equality.
My tip ties in with the advice I also give companies to further empower women. Make your work visible! If there are channels where you can share your successes, you should do so. Talk about what good work you do. This way you can position yourself and use the results you have achieved to your advantage.
