Hello, my name is Christoph Groß.
Born in 1967 in beautiful Wangen im Allgäu.
Somehow, I have probably always been a “vagabond”. As a child, rather unintentionally—for example, 10 school years in 10 different schools. Professionally, I have already been to 20+ countries. So it is hardly surprising that I suddenly ended up with a motorhome “at the end”.
You can find information about my professional background here on Xing, LinkedIn, or on my website.
It has been quite exciting. As a child, my parents regularly “moved me”, and on average I found myself in a new school every year.
That was always a challenge, because it very rarely happened at the end of the school year, but usually right in the middle of it.
I was probably given the saying “nothing is as constant as change” right from the cradle.
At the age of 10, our father came home one day and asked us whether we would like to move to the USA. You can imagine the answer. YES.
No sooner said than done: after a few months of English at school and a “crash course” from a British lord who also offered expensive lessons, we moved to Jackson, MS, USA. (Sure, a British lord and Mississippi do not quite go together, but never mind.)
The experience there was shock and joy at the same time. After just 3.5 years, it was all over. My father suffered a stroke and lay in hospital, paralysed on one side, and his employer at the time preferred to “let him go” shortly before he became entitled to his company pension. He had done nothing but work and then suffered the stroke on a flight to Frankfurt. After an incident like that, you quickly learn to separate the wheat from the chaff, and even at a young age you realise that work and money are not everything.
After that, we went straight back to Germany and into a “normal” life.
What can you say—it shaped my life! From school—I was always the best at English and regularly had grade disputes with teachers—right through to my professional decisions.
The most significant decision was applying to a US company at the age of 25. From then on, my international private and professional life really took off.
By the way, I have been in IT since I was 18. With an apprenticeship as an organisational programmer at Control Data in Munich. My own apartment, my own responsibility, earning my own money. That was the case for me from the very beginning. Nothing was handed to me, and I am still proud of that today.
Egypt, Belgium, China, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Italy, Canada, Croatia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia, Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Czech Republic, Hungary, Tunisia, Turkey, USA, United Arab Emirates, Cyprus
