Stefanie Mirlach: From pro soccer player to h&z consultant

Former pro soccer player Stefanie Mirlach as h&z consultant

She play­ed for the natio­nal youth team, FC Bay­ern and Tur­bi­ne Pots­dam. Today, Ste­fa­nie Mir­lach works as a con­sul­tant at h&z and uses many of the skills she has acqui­red as a pro­fes­sio­nal ath­le­te.

Soc­cer has been my gre­at pas­si­on sin­ce I was a child. It wasn’t easy for me to say part with the round lea­ther – in the last ten years I play­ed for the Bun­des­li­ga teams of FC Bay­ern and Tur­bi­ne Pots­dam, the most suc­cess­ful women’s soc­cer club in Euro­pe at the time. At the same time, I was part of the Ger­man natio­nal team – and went through all teams from the U15 to the U23 – a cool time. We have par­ti­ci­pa­ted in Euro­pean and World Cham­pi­ons­hips.

The high­lights were the World Cup in Chi­le and then the U20 World Cup in Ger­ma­ny, whe­re we beca­me world cham­pi­ons in our own coun­try. One of the rea­sons why I final­ly gave up my soc­cer care­er was that we women can’t have a future as pro­fes­sio­nal soc­cer play­ers. We make a few thousand euros and not mil­li­ons like the male pro­fes­sio­nal play­ers.

Team play­er with focus on stra­te­gic manage­ment

But I always knew that I would start a dif­fe­rent, second pro­fes­sio­nal care­er – and after I had deci­ded on the Mas­ter of Busi­ness Admi­nis­tra­ti­on, I wan­ted to focus on it. I have been part of the h&z team sin­ce Janu­ary 2017, first as an ana­lyst and now as a con­sul­tant. Being a very ambi­tious per­son, it is easy for me to set high stan­dards for mys­elf. Disci­pli­ne, endu­ran­ce, and team spi­rit are cer­tain­ly qua­li­ties that descri­be me. I took them with me from sports and I use them in con­sul­ting. During my time play­ing soc­cer, I also lear­ned to deal with set­backs and to grit my teeth and make it through.

I have alre­ady com­ple­ted several stra­te­gy and purcha­sing pro­jects – my main focus in the Master’s pro­gram was stra­te­gic manage­ment. I enjoy­ed the pro­jects very much. The con­sul­ting job suits me, becau­se like a pro­fes­sio­nal ath­le­te, you tra­vel a lot and get to know many dif­fe­rent peop­le and must be able to „play“ with ever­yo­ne on the team.

With the h&z team at the Munich Con­sul­tants Cup

 A lot of things are easy at h&z: You can ask any col­league at any time – no mat­ter what level – and always get an ans­wer. And you can learn a lot in a very short time, becau­se many very com­pe­tent peop­le work here with dif­fe­rent back­grounds.

In my spa­re time, I like to jog, hike, swim or cycle – pre­fer­a­b­ly out­doors in the Bava­ri­an Ober­land. To stay in shape, I run half mara­thons and do fit­ness and ath­letic con­di­tio­n­ing. Some­ti­mes I put on my cleats and kick the ball around with my col­leagues – at the last retre­at for examp­le, or when we play at the Con­sul­tants Cup. I am still the only woman on the h&z team. But the­re are some real­ly good kickers in our team. Until now I have not been able to get my fema­le col­leagues inte­rested in play­ing soc­cer – not yet, any­way!