Remo

Remo Gerber: DPhil in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry (2004)

About myself
I'm a highly driven global tech executive, living in London with my wife. In our free time we do long walks in this amazing city, go hiking out of town and of course, whenever possible get some skiing done in Switzerland. I’m always happy to help and mentor people, so anyone having questions after reading this, email me on remo.gerber@gmail.com.

My studies in Switzerland
I studied Physics at ETH in Zurich. My third year I spent in Paris as an ERASMUS student, definitely one of the best experiences ever. A few things I learnt:

Whilst at ETH it was hard to study all summer, but having the exams in Paris before the Summer is even harder
Getting a summer off is amazing (especially in the ETH context)
The French employment system is incredibly rigid, people were simply confused why a physics graduate would want to do an internship in consulting – so I went travelling

I completed my studies after returning from Paris with my starting cohort, spending the last year a good time thinking about what to do next and of course applying for the Berrow Scholarship and Oxford.

Going to Oxford
A few thoughts in order of realization:

Oxford accommodation is much smaller than WGs in Zuerich, so don’t bring your furniture.
Oxford is an incredible community of some of the most creative and interesting people you’ll ever meet. After a few hours on the ground the community has taken you up and after fresher’s week you wonder how is it possible that you have a 100 friends, colleagues and acquaintances all around you. People come from all walks of life and that means you’ll find the right sort of people for you, regardless if you are a socialite or a book worm.
Oxford accommodation is actually quite expensive but after a few discussions with the bursar, I simply learnt to live with it (London isn’t much better and the Mayor of London is equally unwilling to change that).
I met my wife in Oxford and ended up living there for nearly 5 years.
Once your studies are over, most of your friends leave Oxford to conquer the world, which also means, it does get quieter after a while, so once my then girlfriend finished her thesis we moved to London.

My degree at Oxford University
I studied for a DPhil (PhD) in Oxford in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry. Typical to doctoral studies, the work is very research based and of course publication focused. Thanks to the scholarship, I had the academic freedom to build a major collaboration with the Dunn School of Pathology and ended up having two supervisors, two labs and completing my DPhil in under three years.

Life as a Berrow Scholar at Lincoln College
The scholarship forms an strong bond and I still have strong contacts to the other Berrows at my time. It’s actually really good fun to have a bunch of the most a-typical Swiss (or studied in Switzerland) group together.

Upon leaving Oxford
Upon leaving, I joined McKinsey London for 4 years and then went into the startup space, first joining Groupon before its IPO as it’s COO in Northern Europe and now building on the next IPO with Gett, an extremely fast growing company in the mobile transportation market.

My life today
I'm the Managing Director for Gett Western Europe, running a quarter of the Israeli tech start-up here in London, with over 200 employees, half a billion revenues and growing 300% year on year. This means, I work a lot, I meet a lot of people in business and politics, as well as look after my teams.
I look back at my academic time with great fondness. Still today, one of the things I enjoy most is doing business experiments (something we do very often in start-ups) test new ideas and let them grow or fail quickly.
My wife and I sometimes go back to Oxford and we feel very emotional about what we often say was certainly one of the best times in our lives with super interesting work and great friends around us.

Send me any questions you may have: remo.gerber@gmail.com

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