Petra Zimmermann will start her new position as Vice Director of the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) in summer 2021. The office announced. She previously worked in the IT industry.
The Federal Office for the Environment has completed its management team with the appointment of a new Vice Director. The physicist and digitization specialist Petra Zimmermann succeeds Christine Hofmann, who retired at the end of January. The new Vice Director will take up the position in summer 2021.
Petra Zimmermann takes over the newly designed department with responsibility for IT, language service, resources and business administration of the Bafu as well as the environmental monitoring section and the two legal and international departments.
Zimmermann studied physics
Zimmermann studied physics in Karlsruhe (D) with minor subjects in computer science, mathematics and mechanical engineering and received his doctorate in data analytics, artificial intelligence, visualization and smart cities from ETH Zurich in 2005.
From 2006 to 2010, Petra Zimmermann headed the internet coordination office of the cantonal administration of Aargau. In this role, she set up the canton’s digital platform and was responsible for system integration for the entire website and intranet.
Has IT experience
In parallel with further management training at the University of St. Gallen, she then worked in the energy industry. From 2013-2017 she was a member of the Management Board of Information Technology Post at Swiss Post and redesigned the IT architecture. In this role, she also dealt with issues relating to the workplace of the future, cloud technologies and security management. In 2018 and 2019, Petra Zimmermann headed the digital unit of the global Vorwerk Group.
She has been a member of the Management Team Transformation & Technology at Zurich Insurance since 2020. In this role, she is responsible for the corporate architecture in the areas of business, IT and data.
The 50-year-old has extensive management experience in different corporate cultures and has also worked on sustainability issues in various areas.
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