The story of me becoming an academic sponsor starts both happy and sad.
For the happy part, it strongly builds on my own positive experiences as a scholar in the scholarship program “Deutschlandstipendium”. I had the chance to spent a very successful year in the program, enjoy career-related events by my sponsor IBM Germany and even support some PR activities of the Career Service at the TU Berlin around the scholarship program. Amongst the highlights, I was interviewed for the website of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and had the chance to be part of a photo session at the annual program-related meeting in Berlin. During this period, I already planned to become a sponsor myself one day and give something back to the scholarship program and to my alma mater.
This day came earlier as expected, which relates to the sad part of the story. When my grandmother died in 2014 after a long time of disease, the decision emerged to use some of the inheritance to sponsor a scholarship at the TU Berlin right away and particularly support a student within my former masters program “Human Factors”. After taking this initial step, I decided to continue the scholarship on my own in the following years up until now.
Looking back, I am very glad that I made this decision. So far, I had the pleasure to support and mentor several extraordinary students (displayed at the left and below) and share exciting discussions about our joint field of interest – building useful technology for humans with the human in mind. I am very proud of each of them for their unique achievements before, during, and after the sponsorship period! Additionally, I learned something new from each of them in our discussions and could enhance my professional network by connecting with fellow sponsors and members of the local selection committee. I really enjoy being a sponsor and as long as this opportunity persists, I will keep going!
To read more about my motivation to sponsor, feel free to check out my interviews at the website of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the university newspaper at TU Berlin. I really hope that I can inspire other people to follow my example. There is no need be a millionaire to become an academic sponsor (I am not a millionaire either), however, the benefit that you can bring to the world is worth a fortune!