The decision has been made to appoint a full-time managing director to the German Ocean Sailing Association. Anja Lebenhagen from Bremerhaven will take up the newly created post on 1 October, where she will work closely with the TO Board.
On the Job advertised at the beginning of the year there was an "unexpectedly high response", according to the second chairman Egon Lutomsky, who is still managing the organisation on an interim basis due to the lack of a top position. "Anja was the preferred candidate of all board members," says Lutomsky.
The 59-year-old can look back on decades of work in sailing organisations and foundations. Since 1990, she has been employed by the German Sail Training Foundation (DSST), which operates the tall ship "Alexander von Humboldt II". Lebenhagen was office manager at DSST in Bremerhaven for a long time and, together with a small team of employees and an honorary board, managed the fortunes of the "Green Lady" and characterised the working methods in the office of the "Alex II". As a sail training ship, the three-masted barque sails in European waters and is managed by a regular volunteer crew and the trainees - the guests on tall ships.
The new TO Managing Director is therefore very familiar with the challenges of working with and for voluntary and passionate sailors. Her first hurdle in her new job will be to find her way around the German ocean sailing scene. Although the "Alexander von Humboldt II" is a sailing Trans-Ocean base, the Bremerhaven native is not an active sailor in her private life. She will still have to build up a comprehensive network within the club.
With a new management team at the helm, Trans-Ocean hopes to professionalise all of the association's activities. The aim is also to relieve the burden on the Executive Board, which has de facto been Resignation of Peter Wiedekamm without a first chairperson. Although Lore Haack-Vörsmann had the Elected first Chairwoman last autumn However, after only a short time he was dismissed with reference to private reasons. surprisingly resigned again.
Anja Lebenhagen will take up her post in autumn at a time when the association has a lot of work to do: preparing for the next Annual General Meeting with the election of the Board of Directors and preparing for the training half-year. Most recently, the association managed to bring hundreds of interested people together virtually via Zoom for entertaining blue water themed sessions with its "micro-seminars" on winter Wednesday evenings.
