Team / Astrid Nierhoff Fassbender

Paris, 2024
Pateau Consultants is conducting several cross-cultural sessions for Sonepar, a leading technical solutions provider to electrical industry professionals.  

Lyon, March 12th, 2024
Jacques Pateau is Key Note speaker at the annual EMEA meeting of EJ, the world leader in access solutions. Topic : "The importance of culture for sustainable development."

Paris-Bonn, February-September 2024
Pateau Consultants continues to support Buyin, the JV of Deutsche Telekom and Orange through on-line and face-to-face coaching and cross-cultural training. 

Mannheim, September 24th-25th, 2024
Prof. Pateau facilitates a cross-cultural seminar for MBA' students at the Mannheim Business School, the leading business school in Gerrmany 

While stimulating a participative business culture as well as effective ways to share knowledge and stories, cultural diversity becomes no longer an obstacle to overcome but a key-asset for any cooperation. This is what I commit myself to.

As a perfectly bicultural person with Franco-German background, Astrid Nierhoff-Fassbender holds a PhD in German literature and arts and assists enterprises eager to boost the spirit of their international teams and to foster a successful cooperation with their global partners. At any level of responsibility within multicultural teams, men and women are more and more involved with the development of intercultural and communication competences, vital to be successful in any process of change and integration. 

         Astrid was born in 1978 and has been living in France, Germany and in the USA before settling down in Cologne (Germany). After graduating from an international high school, she pursues her studies in German literature and art history in Paris (Sorbonne), Heidelberg, Lyon (Ecole Normale Supérieure) and New York (Columbia University). In New York, she lives about two years in the International House, a residential community of 700 members selected from over 100 countries. This intense experience sharpens her appreciation for the very cultural dimension of communication. While doing her PhD thesis, she works for the Art Bureau of the French Embassy in Germany and teaches French and German language and culture at the Universities of Montpellier III and Cologne.

         In 2007 she co-organizes an international conference on the concept of “Misunderstanding”. Scholars as well as cultural and economic players discuss about strategies of power, means of communication and the creative potential of misunderstandings. Astrid decides to pursue this path and launches 2009 into history marketing as well as strategic communication. The promotion of corporate history as unique selling proposition and capital of trust underlies her work on the history of multinational companies such as Merck Darmstadt, Air Liquide or Villeroy & Boch.

         Thus, she almost naturally meets Jacques Pateau early in 2012 and joins the team of Pateau Consultants. During the training seminars, she emphasizes the valorization of culture as key to the progress of performances and relationship between individuals and enterprises.