Bonjour, my name is Anne GILLME. I am a French citizen who has been living and working for 16 years in Belgium where I have become fully integrated in the Flemish (Dutch-speaking) region. I am currently relocating to Hobart (Tasmania, Australia).
I am an engineer of "École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Lille".

I launched my career at Rohm and Haas (acquired in 2009 by Dow Chemical) as a Key Account Manager, travelling around Europe and looking after customers in France, Benelux, Scandinavia, Germany, Italy and North Africa. Working with the food and beverage industry, with the pharmaceutical and chemical businesses, I learned lots of different manufacturing processes, visited numerous plants, met all kinds of people (R&D managers, purchasing directors, operating managers, business owners etc.) and had to deal with many different cultural and negotiating approaches.

This is what Jean-François Ferraro, Global Technical Sales Director, The Dow Chemical Company wrote about me in this position:

“I have worked with Anne many years along and was always fascinated by the passion, energy and dedication shown by Anne in her job.
Anne loves challenges and is never giving up: she is resilient to adversity! She established very tight relationships with her customers and was indefatigably and successfully defending her accounts against competition. She established an efficient internal network and was very well apreciated by her colleagues for her respectful and compassionate behavior. Everybody was enjoying her good mood and sense of humor. I will strongly recommend Anne in a job where relationships are critical and challenges are numerous.”

In order to understand my customers and better fulfil their needs, I added Dutch and Italian to English and German that I already spoke. I wanted people to talk in their mother language because I am convinced that you can only speak with your heart using your mother tongue.
While I enjoyed great success in my job, I wanted more freedom to determine my own strategy, offer more value to my customers, in short, to express myself as an individual and not as part of a 50 000+ employee structure.

That's why I created COLUMBUS PROJECT. Like Christopher Columbus, this reflects a desire to go beyond known boundaries and explore new horizons.

I focused in the beginning on translations and French courses but I am currently broadening my scope and specializing in intercultural communication.

As an individual, I am extremely concerned by the events that occurred at Fukushima which demonstrated how vulnerable and foolish mankind can be. I am totally convinced of the urgency of protecting and preserving our planet. Addressing issues related to climate change and peak oil are absolutely critical: this is why I co-created Transition Town Sandy Bay: an answer to transition from an oil-based society to a resilient, sustainable and vibrant community.

Beside my job, I am happily married and a proud mother of 4 bilingual (soon trilingual) children, helping each other to find our path to happiness and to make our contribution to a better world.