New Board of Directors for WeRobotics in Switzerland

We've established WeRobotics in both the US and Switzerland for a range of strategic reasons. Our Swiss entity was set up over a good year ago, and while we've been growing in terms of employees in Switzerland, a strong board was still missing. We were in search for a board that would reflect the various activities we lead from our Swiss office, more particularly programs and trainings that build local robotics capacity in developing countries, strategy and business development, engineering and administration & finance.

Anna Schwarzhappel

Catherine Saurais

Today we are very happy to announce that we have found two new board members who will be a highly valuable support to address two of our main activities: capacity building and business strategy & development. Personally, I couldn't be more pleased that our new board members agreed to join WeRobotics as it allows me to work with two women who have inspired me for more than a decade, Anna Schwarzhappel and Catherine Saurais. Both are well known and well respected within their area of expertise—innovative training strategies and business development & strategy—as both bring very unique approaches to their trades. They will also help balance our organization by adding two more women to the team.

I had the chance to meet Anna over 15 years ago and the many collaborations we had are part of the most important learning moments of my professional and personal life. While Anna is a champion for innovative training strategies and has a very broad knowledge to support us in our capacity building efforts, she also shares the same values of meaningful, respectful and sustainable localization. She has lived and worked in Tanzania for over 2 years, allowing her to adapt capacity building concepts to various contexts, including in developing countries. And with her graduate study in Human Systems Engineering, she will share with us the latest innovations in change management through her advice and ideas on how we can improve on local capacity building.

I have also known Catherine for over 15 years. While we never directly collaborated, Catherine has been one of the most influential people in my career, and that of many others, as her amazing talent to take complex challenges and turn them into crystal clear, simple and highly effective strategies in record time has always inspired me in all my ventures. Catherine has led business development and strategy for major international brands for over 30 years and is the leading woman behind many brands' market success. Her highly humble and supportive way of developing businesses and turning ideas into success is a perfect match for WeRobotics and the strategy we want to put into place over the coming 3 years.

We sincerely thank Catherine and Anna for accepting their positions and their support and look forward to our collaboration. And over the coming years, we will add 2 more board members to help us address the full scope of our activities lead from Switzerland.

Written by WeRobotics Co-Founder Sonja Betschart