Hi, I’m Linda.

At 19, I announced to my parents that I wanted to travel to South America on my own for six months. With beads of sweat on his forehead and a pulse of 180, my dad spent the whole evening calling old acquaintances in the Caribbean. His former neighbour from a two-month stay in Dominica 25 years earlier offered to take me in. And so began my first big journey on my own: to a small island nation on the other side of the world that would shape the course of my life.

When I began studying anthropology in Frankfurt am Main in 2012, my academic field research began too. Focusing on the Caribbean, of course, a niche that had barely been covered in the programme. It didn’t take long for the government of Dominica to notice the young white woman who was studying their island of 70,000 people so intensively. And so my ties with government members and the Prime Minister grew closer.

In 2018, however, my career took me back to Germany. The programme “Kultur macht stark!” (“Culture makes you strong”), run by the German Sports Youth (dsj) within the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB), was the perfect bridge between my studies and my passion for sport. And so my journey into the world of sports federations began.

The dsj gave me the chance to take on many different roles, from youth organisation manager to advisor to the executive management. The youth organisation strengthened my expertise in socially relevant sports topics that you would hardly gain in a degree programme or a similar field. This laid the foundation for my move to the German Football Association (DFB), where I first worked on strengthening amateur football and finally on developing the association’s entire strategy.

Personal family events led my partner and me to take a deep look at what we really wanted, which ultimately brought us to the sunshine of southern Cyprus. This is also where we started our family. So now, as a toddler mom, I’m taking the step into self-employment from here. I’m looking forward to this exciting time with you!