After graduating from a girls’ high school, she studied business administration. In 2002, she wrote her thesis on the topic of women in leadership positions and graduated as the top student in her class.

She began her professional career in the finance industry, where she worked for 10 years as a financing and asset advisor in sales. In 2012, she moved to a financial association with an attached academy and advised her clients on personnel development measures for professionals and executives.

Even then, she noticed that there were very few women in leadership positions in the finance industry, despite many well-educated women working in the field. She regularly experienced in her own job applications that banks and companies chose the male candidate who was also in the running for the leadership position.

This, along with her desire for independence and meaningful work, led her to co-found the consulting firm Gehrke & Vetterkind Consultants with her husband in 2021. At the turn of the year 2021/2022, after extensive research and many interviews, she published her first representative study on women’s leadership preferences titled “Women Want to Lead – But on Different Terms” (www.femaleleader.info). She was supported in her scientific work by Professor Dr. Armin Trost of Furtwangen University.

Since then, she has been advising companies on diversity and inclusion and corporate culture.

In addition, Lilian Gehrke-Vetterkind has launched her own leadership development program for women, the Young Female Leadership Program, together with Anja Kirsammer, which has been successfully conducted regularly since 2022.

She is a sought-after keynote speaker and regularly speaks at corporate events or large networking events on diversity and inclusion and female leadership.

Lilian Gehrke-Vetterkind is a cooperation partner of the Haufe Academy and the AllBright Foundation, as well as a member of the women’s networks FidAR e.V. and nushu.

In her free time, she works as a volunteer mentor and is politically active in her district.