Tatjana Kunz

What has life or your experience taught you that you now participate in? 

That empathy is very important in everything you do. That the interpersonal is at least as important as expertise when working in a team. I think people underestimate that when they are studying or in training. People think that you can only get a good job if you have as much specialist knowledge as possible. But in fact, soft skills are also important. For example, to solve conflicts and to respond to different personalities. Ultimately, you can only learn that by working with people. For example, I think it’s important to simply stop and ask others: How are you doing right now? Do you have a question? Taking the time to offer help and support, even if you’re under some kind of pressure yourself. That you also have the freedom to ask supposedly stupid questions or questions that are still uninformed. That should be a matter of course, but unfortunately it’s not.  

Why do you do the job you do today? 

Because I have found a job here that combines work and fun. It gives me a lot of pleasure and I can enjoy it for a good eight hours a day. I’ve always had the vision of putting out a cool product with a team – in the current case, hopefully one that fights cybercrime. Part of my job is to make even supposedly abstract end results as approachable as possible. Watching awareness grow gives me a lot of joy. And when you see every three weeks what you have achieved together and how you have grown together as a team. After all, I’m still new and in the process of getting to know everyone. Then it’s about finding out how we can support each other and grow even closer together. That’s challenging, but also super exciting for me. It stands and falls with the people. Fortunately, there are a lot of nice people at DCSO who I enjoy working with. And at the end of the day, these are the people you spend most of your life with. So I’ve got it pretty well figured out. 

Do you have any advice you would like to give to other women? 

I think there should be more understanding that some women have self-doubt. At the same time, I think it’s important to emphasize that you should also dare to do something and take advantage of the opportunities that open up to you. Even if you’re not sure you can do it yet. Sometimes it pays to be a little scared. Like a new job that challenges you more. Or a stay abroad. On those points, I’d like to encourage everyone to be bold. I speak from experience here, because I myself have been abroad a lot and have done many different internships. Something like that builds your identity and really takes you further.