EESTEC Magazine Vol 34 2014/1 | Page 28

Interviews A Look Into EESTEC’s past Interviewee: Jürgen Tzschoppe Interviewer: Yagmur Tulga, Darija Šalehar EESTEC is a huge network, becoming bigger and bigger each day, since the day it was found. Year after year, our Association changes itself with innovation and offers us an open field in which we can power our future in the best way! This time, with the help of our History Book, we looked back to the year 1992 in EESTEC. Jürgen Tzschoppe, Vice-Chairman in 1992 International Board, kindly accepted to do an interview with us, and replied our questions related to those years in EESTEC, its expansion since those days and shared his point of view of us, volunteers in an International Students Association. We would once more like to thank to Jürgen for his acceptance, the interview was a big pleasure for us! Jürgen studied in Aachen, joined EESTEC in 1989 and volunteered to become Vice Chairman of EESTEC International. He was also chief editor of the Newsletter for some time. Today, he is working as Senior Vice President in the Norwegian based energy company Statkraft, the biggest producer of renewable energy in Europe. He is responsible for energy market activities in Continental Europe, UK, Turkey and South America. After his studies of Electrical Engineering he worked for several years at the University of Aachen, consulting energy companies and finishing his PhD. Before joining Statkraft in 2002 he worked with the American energy trading firm Enron. Jürgen lives in Düsseldorf/Germany, is married and has two kids. Please share your story behind the decision of joining EESTEC in those years. I started studying in 1988 and joined EESTEC a year later. Back then EESTEC was one  activity in the Students’ Association, taking care of international contacts. Honestly, I found it quite exciting linking to Universities and people abroad. The first exchange I joined was with the University of Budapest. 10-15 students from Aachen went to Budapest for a 10 days trip and in the other direction shortly afterwards for a return visit. Back then my motivation was about meeting people from different cultures and nationalities. Meeting and exchanging thoughts was great fun actually triggered me volunteering to work with the Association. At that time organization was informal, exchanges were the core, but a few workshops were organized too. I remember visiting Denmark for a workshop about renew X