Waltraud Sedounik, Ph.D. Senior Consultant

Waltraud is an International Strategic Change and Business Transformation Consultant, with 20 years’ experience in managing successful large and SME business transformation activities - encompassing strategic business change, strategy implementation, business performance improvement and programme management.

She has worked with major clients across the Financial Services, Pharmaceutical, Technology and Manufacturing sectors, and has deployed her skills in these sectors across Europe, the United States, Japan, Middle East and CEE countries. Waltraud speaks English and German fluently, and Spanish conversationally.

Waltraud’s key operating methodology is the Business Transformation Cycle, which is a systems approach to achieving sustainable results that incorporates an innovative analysis of the key business issues, leadership team dynamics and implementation challenges. Waltraud then assists CEOs and senior executives to rapidly design and deploy high impact transformation strategies that create tangible results, as well as more effective organisations. To achieve this, Waltraud brings a mixture of real world business experience and leading-edge evidence-based methodologies to meet her clients’ needs.

Examples of successful client programmes include:

• Definition of a competitive business vision & strategy and subsequent creation of a roadmap for implementation of the vision
• Articulation, validation and deployment of profitable business strategies grounded in market realities
• Alignment of organisational structures and processes with business strategies to achieve business process improvement
• Assessment and mitigation of the risks associated with strategic change management
• Delivery of increased operational effectiveness to maximise trading efficiency and achieve cost take-out

Waltraud has also designed, directed and taught Executive Education programmes in Europe, the United States, Japan and the Middle East, preparing leaders for large strategic change programmes, educating leaders for merger and divestiture programmes and devising implementation programmes for performance improvement and change initiatives. She has developed, and continues to deliver, Executive Education programmes for the Hernstein institute for International Leadership in Vienna and also spent 8 years designing and teaching postgraduate programmes in Strategic Management and Change in Organisations at the University of Vienna.

Dr Sedounik holds a Ph.D. in Economic Psychology and Sociology, with a specialisation in System and Organisational Dynamics and a Graduate Certificate in Management and Administration from Harvard University, with a specialisation in Strategic Management and International Business. She holds a Masters Degree in Teaching, is a Certified Prince 2 Practitioner with APMG/QMS registered certification.  Dr. Sedounik is based in London, England.

Waltraud has published a variety of articles about management and leadership, and has co-authored a book entitled “Management Navigator."

• Management Navigator: Management Theories in Practice: Co-Author with Stefan Doblhofer and Thomas Boehm, Vienna (2008)  
• Maximizing Self Determination: Strategies for Mediation in the Practice of Management; Sedounik & Nagarajan, “Institute for Dispute Resolution”, U.S.A. (2007)
• Successfully Navigating through a Merger Implementation, White Paper Gallup, London (2005)
• Challenges for Managers in the 21st Century, Fischer Gaertner Group International, (2003)

Suzanne Simmons