Basel duo take Swiss Businesswoman prize
The prestigious bi-annual Swiss Businesswoman award has been won this year by GetWellness co-founder, Barbara Staehelin, and her business partner, Catharina Maulbecke.
Founded in 1997, GetWellness is a medical consultancy firm, which offers specialist advice to companies and healthcare professionals, and provides a 24-hour service via the Internet for executives who need medical advice or treatment when travelling abroad.
Staehelin told swissinfo that it was a great honour for both her and her partner to win the prize. “It was a big honour to be on this list in the first place,” she said.
The Swiss Businesswoman award was announced at a gala reception in Zurich on Tuesday evening. The award, run by champagne makers, Veuve Clicquot, has been going since 1972 and is held in some 20 countries.
The other finalists on the Swiss shortlist were Irène Hiltbrunner, founder of Dynamic Business Services in Biel, and Ricarda Berg, managing director of M+W Zander in Zurich.
Mark Schumacher, managing director of Veuve Clicquot (Switzerland), who presented the award, told swissinfo: “With the prize we want to promote businesswomen, female leadership and female management in business. Especially in Switzerland women are still very rare at top levels of management: the prize should be a signal that there are capable women out there and they need and deserve our recognition.”
Staehelin and Maulbecke were chosen originally from a field of 37 candidates. Making it to the final three, their dossier was submitted to some 800 voters, drawn from the world of economics, politics, culture and the media.
“I’m certainly very competitive and Catharina is as well, so we’d be lying if we said weren’t,” added Staehelin.
The two, who both studied biochemistry and worked for the United States consultancy firm, McKinsey, identified a niche market in providing advice about healthcare in an increasingly globalised economy.
“We realised how frustrated one gets if you’re torn between different systems,” Staehelin told swissinfo. “Everyone is organised differently, and we saw there was a need to organise this because the economy is globalised but medicine is not.”
Before joining McKinsey, Maulbecke, 40, worked until 1992 at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, while Staehelin, 38, completed her studies at Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology in 1989.
By 1997, they had both decided it was time for a change. “It was the sheer excitement of trying something that hadn’t existed before that motivated us to open GetWellness ,” said Staehelin.
In the four years since GetWellness was started, it now has an annual turnover of SFr3 million ($1.67 million), and employs more than 50 people. Staehelin says much of that success can be attributed to the working relationship she has with Maulbecke.
“We think along the same lines, but we can also be each other’s harshest critics. We are also very supportive of each other – when one of us has a bad day, the other picks up the slack and that helps us deal with the pressures of starting up a business.”
Winning the Swiss Businesswoman award is certainly a boost for their business. However, Staehelin and Maulbecke also believe their example and the very existence of such awards can also promote the role of women in business in Switzerland.
“To some degree I think we can all benefit if the idea of women entrepreneurs just gets to be part of the normal course of life,” said Staehelin.
by Tom O’Brien
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