25th Anniversary Erasmus Portrait

To continue our celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the Erasmus Programme this year, we bring you our second instalment of the Erasmus portraits where we interview a former Erasmus/exchange student who tell us about what their time spent abroad meant for them and how it is influenced them in their later life.

Following a successful and intriguing interview with Johannes Gehringer in our last outing, this time we decided to interview Iris Hormann, President of EF Languages Courses Abroad and partner of ESN since January 2012. We had the pleasure of welcoming Iris to the ESN office in February to learn about ESN, discuss our cooperation and find out about her exchange experience. 

Background

Iris Hormann is of German nationality but currently lives and works across the border in the beautiful city of Zurich in Switzerland. She told us her age, but we won’t share it here, since a lady never reveals her age. But Iris is a proud mother of 4 children and is currently working as President of EF Languages Courses Abroad. In this position she is responsible for overseeing all global sales and marketing activities of EF’s language courses abroad in over 40 countries. EF is the world’s leading private education company specialized in language travel and cultural exchange and thus has many similar principles and values as our organisation, and in many respects this is what has brought us together.

Iris studied North American Studies, Politics and Journalism whilst at university between 1993 and 1997. Her studies began in Bonn and she later moved to Berlin to continue her education, which was supplemented by her Erasmus experience in none of than the Home of ESN (and capital of Europe) Brussels. After successfully completing her studies in 19977 and catching the ‘international bug’ Iris embarked on her career with EF Education First in Berlin in 1998. But due to the global nature of the organisation she has had the wonderful opportunity to work in some of great cities and seats of learning worldwide such as Boston, London, Lucerne and Zurich, where she has worked in various sales and marketing functions for EF. 

Exchange experience

The Erasmus adventure began for Iris in January 1995 and lasted until June in the same year. This wonderful opportunity presented itself to Iris in the 4th university semester of her studies, and she chose none other than the city of Brussels and the French-speaking Université Libre de Bruxelles. Her Erasmus experience was a fantastic semester full of many fond memories and experiences that remain dear to her till this day. Rather than being stuffed into an international student dorm upon arrival in Brussels, Iris was lucky enough to get a much more immersive and local experience by moving in with a local family. She commented how she will never forget the warm welcome the Belgian host family gave her, and the assistance they gave her in integrating into Belgian culture and learning the language. She had the chance every morning to practice her French over a coffee or in the evening relaxing with a glass of wine, quite simply the perfect atmosphere to learn a language. 

The study programme that Iris chose  at the ULB offered many unique opportunities due to the fact she was studying at the heart of the EU institutions. She mentioned how lectures would sometimes be given by prominent EU politicians at the ULB and these really triggered the interest in international politics. Also, she engaged in a variety of extra-curricular activities in Belgium to get the full experience of the country. In particular with friends, Iris organised a 2-week bike ride along the Belgian Coast at the end of my semester with several international Erasmus and Belgian friends who were also studying at the ULB to celebrate the end of their studies. This trip is held fondly in the memory and ever since Iris has returned to the coastline of Belgium many times.

Impact 

Iris’ Erasmus experience is to blame (shall we say) for her catching the famous ‘travel bug’ and she realised that travelling and getting to know new cultures would be an important part of her life from this point onwards. Thus she embarked on an international career with a company whose mission it is to conquer the barriers of language, culture and geography, very similar in many respects to the values embodied by the Erasmus programme and ESN. Through her work and personal quest to experience new cultures, Iris have travelled the world, and even in the last month she has stopped off in Tokyo, Almaty, Paris and Buenos Aires, and she rightly says that “travelling is definitely a very important element of my life.”

Furthermore, she learnt many skills from her Erasmus experience, not necessarily those appearing in her CV, but important nonetheless. She felt that the Erasmus taught her open-mindedness, flexibility, tolerance, cultural awareness and ability to work with people from different cultures which ultimately helped her to pursue her dream of an international career. 

With such a wonderful experience through the Erasmus programme, Iris has no doubts that students should endeavour to go abroad even for the shortest period of time, to get to know another culture, and she commented that “there is no better way to prepare yourself for today’s global world.” Even with students today perhaps having a much better skill set of the foreign language, are more travelled and due to the internet, are already more knowledgeable about other cultures, that should be no excuse for not going abroad as there is so many things you will only learn and see whilst bathing directly in the local culture. 

And last not least, when Iris was asked what could we do improve the exchange experience, she believes that a  preparatory course to prepare students for their semester abroad refreshing their language skills but also preparing them some of the key aspects of the other culture would be really helpful at the beginning.

Written by Leo Smith