I’ve never been very fond of CVs. They like straight lines, tidy boxes, and clear beginnings and endings — none of which describe my life particularly well.
Still, I gave it a try.
If you’re curious to know more about me beyond dates and bullet points, you might enjoy a detour: my Wikipedia page holds the factual bits, and my blog carries the stories, the questions, and the movement in between.
You can download a PDF-file here.
Ulrike Reinhard
(Social) Entrepreneur · Connector · Speaker · Author
Profile
Born in Heidelberg, Germany, in the later years of the German Wirtschaftswunder, she grew up in a lower middle-class family. Widowed at the age of 35, she has one son.
After completing her schooling in Heidelberg, Ulrike studied business management at the University of Mannheim before embarking on a multifaceted career that moves fluidly across systems — corporate and informal, Western and Global South — translating complexity into lived, human experience.
Rather than following a linear professional path, she has built a body of work rooted in presence, trust, and long-term relationships, collaborating with companies, institutions, communities, and individuals across continents.
Since 2010, Ulrike Reinhard is a sought-after speaker known for story-driven, reflective talks that challenge conventional thinking without prescribing solutions. She speaks on:
- Complexity and non-linear change
- Trust, self-organization, and leadership without control
- Cultural transformation and grassroots innovation
- Learning from failure, uncertainty, and lived experience
- Rethinking success, impact, and responsibility
Her talks are characterized by personal narrative rather than theory, cross-disciplinary insight, and a strong ethical grounding.
She has spoken at international conferences including 9 TEDx events, and at corporate leadership gatherings, cultural institutions, leading universities such as Harvard and MIT, as well as innovation forums worldwide.
Core Fields of Work & Experience
Business, Networks & Digital Culture
- 1980–1985: Early work with German public broadcasters ZDF and later SDR, at a time when digital technologies were just beginning to enter television production and broadcasts were starting to reach international cable networks, providing early exposure to media as a global, networked system and opening pathways to professional work in the United States.
- 1985–1995: Early participant and observer of internet culture, digital communities, and network-based collaboration. Member of The Well since 1987.
- 1993-2025: Close collaboration and dialogue with leading thinkers in complexity, organizational psychology, and network theory.
- 1994-2014: Founder of whois Verlag and the whoiswho platform, a publishing and networking initiative in German-speaking countries that combined company profiles with editorial content—case studies, initiatives, and reports—to actively sustain and grow a professional community around digital culture and emerging industries.
- 1995-2025: Advisor, sparring partner, and conversation partner to leaders, entrepreneurs, and organizations navigating uncertainty and transformation.
- 2005-2025: Longstanding relationships with global companies and institutions, often acting as a bridge between formal structures and emerging practices.
Social Innovation
- 2007-2025: Focus on bottom-up change, trust-based systems, and non-instructional facilitation.
- 2007-2017: Founder of we-magazine, a non-commercial publication centered on the idea of the “WE” as a social and cultural practice; its content was translated into Chinese and Arabic, extending the dialogue across cultures.
- 2008-2010: Initiator of DNA digital and Reboot_D, community-driven platforms and publications centered on social innovation, participation, and new forms of collective agency in the digital age.
- 2012-2020: Extensive on-the-ground experience in India, working closely with local communities, children, educators, and informal leaders.
- 2014-2025: Founder and initiator of Janwaar Castle, an internationally recognized grassroots project in rural India using skateboarding, education, and self-organization to catalyze social, cultural and economic change.
Sport & Embodied Experience
- 1970-1980: Former professional basketball player; member of the German national team.
- 1970-1980: Sport as a formative influence on leadership, resilience, teamwork, and decision-making under pressure.
- 2012-2025: Skateboarding as a central cultural and educational tool in later work, particularly in youth empowerment and self-directed learning.
Interviews & Media Contributions
Ulrike Reinhard has conducted and published numerous interviews with leading figures from business, culture, technology, and social innovation, contributing to public conversations on change, complexity, and responsibility from 1987-2025.
She was a contributor to Google’s first printed edition of Think Quarterly (2011), where she authored three articles, alongside authors who regularly contribute to The Guardian and The New York Times, marking an early recognition of her voice in international discussions on digital culture, networks, and societal transformation.
Her work has appeared across a wide range of formats, including books, essays, long-form interviews, and public dialogue, consistently bridging theory and practice, global discourse and local reality.
Writing & Authorship
Ulrike Reinhard is a prolific author and editor whose work explores since the late 1980s digital culture, transformation, and social change. Through her publishing house whois, she has produced influential titles including Digitale Transformationen, DNA digital, Reboot_D, and a series of books on new media and the evolving internet since the mid 1990ies.
Reinhard is also the author of Skater Girl Asha: When You Dare to Dream (2023), a true-story narrative about Asha Gond, an Adivasi girl from Janwaar, India, who broke with convention, escaped an arranged marriage, and found purpose through skateboarding. The book tells how skateboarding helped Asha find her voice and become a strong role model for girls in her village and beyond. Skater Girl Asha is available as a book and audiobook on multiple platforms.
Regular contributor to conversations on culture, change, and responsibility through essays, interviews, and public dialogue.
Ulrike’s most recent book, The Nomad – My Journey from Good Girl to a Freer Soul, draws together encounters, reflections, and lived moments from a life spent bridging systems, cultures, and ways of knowing.
Distinctive Strengths
- Exceptional ability to connect people across cultures, disciplines, and social realities
- Deep credibility in both corporate and grassroots contexts
- Comfort with ambiguity, conflict, and not-knowing
- Long-term commitment rather than project-based engagement
- Translating lived experience into insight without abstraction
Languages: German (native), English (fluent), French (basic).