ANDREA KATHRIN CHRISTENSON
Andrea Christenson is Senior Advisor at Rhodion Advisors. She works with family businesses, supporting them with strategic, organizational, but also personnel issues and helps them to prepare these companies in the long term and, if necessary, prepare them for a transfer of generations.
Her main interests are in the areas of governance, human resources, structuring the implementation and complex decision-making processes. In this respect, she is above all concerned with balancing the personal concerns and interests of the family members on the one hand, and on the other hand, with the pursuit of set goals. Based on her over 30 years of experience in and for family businesses, Andrea Christenson contributes to overcoming conflicts, strengthening family cohesion and understanding for each other and developing solutions. Personally, she feels it is a great enrichment and fulfillment to support the leaders and the next generation as coach, mentor and sparring partner. In the context of leadership development programs, she is a coach and mentor at IESE, Barcelona. She is a member of advisory boards and administrative boards of European companies.
At the beginning of her professional career Andrea Christenson worked at the Boston Consulting Group for seven years, most recently as a Principal. During this time she supported numerous international family businesses in improving their competitive position through strategic and operational measures. She gained experience in the fields of brand management and sales, and was a founding member of the “BCG Task Force Organizational Development”. She was also the founder and head of the internal training for consultants with no academic knowledge in the field of economics, a key milestone for the sustained growth of BCG’s expertise, which is still active today.
Afterwards, she acquired the family company “Käthe Kruse Puppen” from the founding family and transformed it from a traditional handicraft workshop into an internationally active toy and textile company in the premium segment by repositioning the brand and professionalizing the production. In 2013, the company was sold to a strategic investor.
Andrea Christenson studied business economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration and earned an MBA at the IESE in Barcelona. She speaks fluent English and Spanish. She is the mother of three grown sons.