Lara Donners
By starting up CONGAZ Lara found a good combination between her educational background and her professional experience.
Lara holds a Master’s degree in Commercial Sciences, with a specialisation in Human Resources (1994). Up to 2004 she gained her early professional experience in HR departments of larger organisations (BASF Antwerp and Alcatel*) as an HR Business Partner.
In 2004 she started to work as a consultant for Kaleido, already with the idea to work for innovative/creative organisations but mainly working on HR projects to enhance change in organisations, which involved project management, facilitating discussions and workshops on many different topics.
Since 2006 she could really focus … on Congaz
She has a strong preference for ideation & implementation. So she likes to read books and look for pragmatic concepts that can be used in the diverse organisations she works for. With her strong drive for implementation she likes to fuel customers with energy/ideas for action and she gets energy from ‘the sparkle in the eye’ of a customer knowing the next step to take.
Examples of organisations mentioned above are : Axel Vervoordt, Barco, Colruyt, Dela, IBBT, Modular, Osar, S&V Management Consultants, Traficon, Verhaert
She took many specific courses, e.g. Assessor training, advisory skills for advisors, innovation & creativity conference Buffalo University. She also facilitated several seminars at the Vlerick Management School
(*) Between 1998 and 2004 she worked with Alcatel. She started as an HR officer of the R&D department of Alcatel Micro Electronics, (Zaventem), where she had the huge challenge of retaining and attracting talent for this fast growing department in which new technologies needed to be translated into products.
In 2001 she moved to Alcatel Bell (Antwerp), where she was responsible for Management Development. She combined this with an HR manager role for the central Research & Innovation department. Her prime focus was talent management and the set up of the Innovation Taskforce.
In 1994 she started her career as an HR Manager for some production departments of BASF Antwerp.