8 March 2020 is International Women’s Day – on this day, we particularly like to look at impressive female top executives, who successfully manage their family alongside their career. One of these strong women is Carola Grummt, who has held the position of Head of Business Development, Product Management and IT at the OEKO-TEX® Association in the Zurich location since 2016. 

But, how can family and career be combined? What does the day-to-day life of a mother and manager of a global company look like? 

An interview with Carola Grummt shows that she is not only a kitchen fairy, monster hunter and nurse, but also a person with leadership quality and management expertise. 

Alongside family, personnel and responsibility, fashion & sustainability also play an important role for her. She stands for the generation of women, who have created their place at the management level and is a real power woman, who gives 100 percent for her family after work and is deeply committed to social affairs. She holds various honorary posts and participates actively in sports, where she finds her balance to work. Although a day only has 24 hours for Carola Grummt, she knows how to make the most of it – both professionally and privately.

Her passion for fashion and understanding of textiles were awakened during her vocational training as a designer for fashion and her degree studies later on as a textile engineer.  It can be described as a lucky coincidence that her interest and understanding of fashion and product development ultimately found one another during her professional development at the OEKO-TEX® Association.

The combination of mechanics and software, as well as the opportunity to specialise in project management and leadership management after her Master’s degree studies in general management, associate Carola Grummt with her position at OEKO-TEX®. In particular, she appreciates the responsibility, the structuring scope, the complexity, interdisciplinary teams and different cultures, which all pursue one goal: living better and more consciously.

From personal motivation to act and live more sustainably, Carola Grummt pays attention to mainly seasonal shopping, regional producers and generally on ecological sustainability. The consciousness, which Carola Grummt lives out at home, is reflected in the philosophy of the OEKO-TEX® Association.

With the current requirement for more transparency and the growing green movement, there is also more of a focus on the fashion industry. The OEKO-TEX® Association, with its labels and standards, has been supporting retailers for more than 25 years in producing more responsibly and sustainably. Worldwide, 18 independent research and test institutes from the fields of textiles and leather ecology are developing limit values for the textile industry, which need to be fulfilled for a certification. With the task of treating our planet with a greater sense of responsibility, Carola Grummt has by far not arrived at what is ultimately possible with OEKO-TEX®. Her visions for the company are to establish the MADE IN GREEN by OEKO-TEX® label more prominently in textile trade and to reduce the CO2 footprint. In the near future, Carola Grummt also intends to implement the issue of recycling more actively, in cooperation with OEKO-TEX®, by allowing producers to have recycled products certified with STANDARD 100. The limit values will naturally also need to comply with the standard but will give retailers the opportunity to reuse textiles and visibly make clothing identifiable for the consumer as being recyclable. Consumers have a strong focus on this subject.

Furthermore, Carola Grummt can imagine having even more influence with OEKO-TEX® on the outdoor and sport textiles industry, while placing more emphasis on the issue of sustainability. In the area of leather ecology, OEKO-TEX® has already achieved an important milestone with its new regulation in 2020, in that the MADE IN GREEN Label is now also available for the leather industry.

But, Carola Grummt not only wants to do more to live more consciously and sustainably professionally, but also privately. She personally wants to be more careful in handling resources, particularly in consuming water and energy. She also intends to pay more attention to these issues in her own consumption behaviour. With clothing, this has already been an established feature for a long time. When buying textiles, she always pays attention to the OEKO-TEX® labels and standards and decides consciously to buy these garments - for herself and her children.

Carola Grummt is not only a role model for her children, but also for her employees and each individual consumer. In her position at OEKO-TEX®, she is a decision-maker, who will make it possible to protect the planet for us, her family and our families in the future.