AIESEC – the School for Global Leadership

In between flying to the Middle East for a royal meeting with the Sheiks and a business chat with Mr. Schroeder of Germany, AIESEC managed to catch hold of Mr. Maerki.

Today Mr. Maerki is the Chairman of the board of IBM in Europe, Middle East and Africa, thereby heading a USD $28 billion business with more than 106, 000 employees in 124 countries around the globe.

His long road to success includes three years spent with AIESEC, first in Switzerland and then one year with AIESEC International.

It all began in 1969, when LC Basel was hunting for a new leader. Mr. Maerki was recruited into AIESEC and went straight from being a new member into the top leadership position of Local Committee President.

Barely two years later, Mr. Maerki was working in AIESEC International responsible for exchange with the President hailing from Ireland and a team-mate from the Philippines.

Right from the beginning Mr. Maerki was presented with opportunities to take on responsibility. Looking back, he says that this is what he remembers most about his entire AIESEC experience.

He was present, when AIESEC carried out its matching process electronically for the first time. This took place at International Congress 1970, when the delegates had to travel from the conference site to the city of Tokyo to use their punch-cards.

While Mr. Maerki was Exchange Coordinator on AI, AIESEC reached its highest Exchange numbers recorded thus far.

After he had finished his studies, Mr Maerki supported AIESEC through chairing several international conferences.

Mr. Maerki attraction to international organisations took root while he spent one year on an exchange in the United States.

He regards this year as his most outstanding experience which has shaped his life and subsequent choices.

During his stint with AIESEC, Mr. Maerki says he gained leadership experience, communication skills and achieving success within an inter-cultural environment. He believes that what AIESEC gave him was the opportunity to take on responsibility.

Mr. Maerki recounts traveling from office to office of CEO's in the US, looking for funds to keep this youth organisation going. It also gave him the self-confidence to sit opposite high ranking executives, and feel on par while discussing partnerships between AIESEC and large multi-nationals.

"AIESEC gives young people practical experience in organisational management and inter-cultural communication," Mr. Maerki explains. "In today’s business world, a lot of management takes place virtually, and as AIESEC is mainly run using web-based communication, AIESECers also walk away with this vital skill."

After his University and AIESEC terms, Mr. Maerki joined IBM. Some of his significant achievements with IBM include doubling the revenue ($12 Billion), between 1996 and today, as well as raising the number of employed colleagues from 32,000 to 68,000, thereby making IBM Glbal Services the largest employer of Management and IT consultants, not only in Europe, but worldwide.

In addition to this, Mr. Maerki is a member of the Corporate Social Responsibility Advisory Board, which represents around 50 large European Corporations.

Over the coming five years, this organisation is going to be focusing the energy of the EU commission in the area of CSR.

Through his intercultural experiences and with those within the international environment of IBM, Mr. Maerki felt that IBM’s extensive employee selection criterion was lacking two crucial aspects.

In addition to a drive to achieve, a personal dedication to excellence and other stringent characteristics, Mr. Maerki added inter-cultural experience.

He feels that language skills, international work-experience and respect for cultural divergence are all essential in today’s borderless world.

And this is where an organization like AIESEC plays an important role

Alumni Stories, 2002