Jochen Kleef

I'm a leader with scientific education and a successful track record in team building, turnaround and growth management. To me, management is about coping with complexity. Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change and inspiring people. After an apprenticeship in a hi-tech SME in Cologne and a University degree in Physics in Jena, I pursued an international career in project management and general business management. My locations included London, Frankfurt, Beijing and Hong Kong, where I was responsible for professional services business from 17 to over 4,000 national members of staff. With all these businesses and projects, I successfully executed the strategies I developed after initial reviews. In 2010 I resigned as Head of Professional Services for the Asia Pacific region from the global firm (which has since been sold twice). Subsequently in July 2010, I founded kleef&co in Hong Kong (www.kleef.co) to help early stage and small companies in the green industry to become more professional, establishing themselves as serious industry players thereby generating business growth towards a more sustainable economy. kleef&co therefore is a boutique strategy, business & growth management advisory firm specialising in sustainable business. My honorary work involved being expert citizen in the environmental committee in my German home town, leading a pan-European working group for the German Physics Society (DPG), and establishing Hong Kong's 1st Waldorf Primary School Forest House (www.waldorf.edu.hk) as elected Chairman of the Board of Trustees. The current base is Berlin where we successfully formed a branch office of the HK entity in 2015.