Posted on 21/12/2017

Tatiana and Marcel Dickmann

Tati came from Ecuador and Marcel from Germany – both on a one semester exchange which brought them much more than expected.

“When I arrived at the Olten staff house for my exchange semester in spring 2007, I was given a room on the 13th floor. My buddy brought me and upon our arrival there was another exchange student there. “Can you look after these girls?” my buddy asked the student, as they knew each other from the HR class. That was how Marcel and I met for the first time.  He was on exchange from FH Dortmund and I from Universidad  Católica de Santiago de Guayaquil in Ecuador.   We didn’t go to the same classes but on the 13th floor we all socialised together a lot.  We never dated as such but hung out and got to know each other very well. By June we were a couple.  Before we returned to finish our education in our different countries, we travelled around Switzerland and at the end of our time together Marcel proposed.

I knew it was real but I also had my doubts whether a relationship could survive the distance and the long separation on the horizon. We agreed that he would come in December to meet my family and then we could announce our engagement. But shortly after going back home, in September, we both realized that it didn’t make sense to be apart. So he came to Ecuador in December to marry me. I completed my open semester and moved to Germany by March 2008 to learn German and a year later we were back in Olten: Marcel had accepted a job in Switzerland and I had decided to study IM.”

Coming Full Circle: Tati, Marcel and Oscar. Ten years after meeting and marrying, the two former IM (exchange) students are back In Trimbach where their baby Oscar was born just a few steps from where the couple met.

Now  “This month is our 10th anniversary.  And the biggest gift we received was the birth of our son Oscar last September.  We also moved to our house this summer – to Trimbach.  As Marcel said, we have come full circle – we are back to the place where we started as a couple and our son was born in the hospital on the same grounds as where we had lived.

In February I will return, at 70%, to my job as Country Business Manager LFP DesignJet at HP GmbH in Zurich. I really enjoy that it’s so international and that besides using my managerial skills I can use all my languages.  I like the travelling and getting to know the business in other countries, I enjoy presenting our products and being in contact with our customers.”

Tati, after graduating in 2012, first worked for Scintilla for 2 years and then joined HP’s graduate program. She was promoted to her current role in March 2015.

Marcel, who graduated in 2007, worked first in auditing for Deloitte but then switched to finance controlling in the energy branch working for companies like AXPO and BKW. While employed in that role at BKW AG, he completed his MAS in Controlling at ZHAW. Since January 2016 he has been finance controller and member of the Management of the hospital Dornach (Solothurner Spitäler AG). “Being a site finance controller means to have the whole responsibility of the site’s finance, which allows me to interact with different people in different departments in order to understand their processes. So being a hospital finance controller has brought me to have experiences like joining a couple of surgeries without being a doctor. And I like the challenge of having this big responsibility while working 80%. I enjoy spending every Friday with my son and wife.”