Meet MSM’s staff members: introducing Karen Tromp

At MSM we are proud of the more than 40 staff members who are committed and eager to fulfill our mission in offering management and entrepreneurship education, advice and research to individuals and organizations from all over the world. To become more acquainted with our staff members and to show you how it feels for them working at MSM we will each month highlight one of our staff members. This month the spotlight will be on Ms. Karen Tromp.

Let me introduce myself…
My name is Karen Tromp and I’m a Senior Officer Global Education programs at MSM. I coordinate the MSM MBA Residential program in Maastricht and the Global Education program offered in Suriname in cooperation with FHR Lim A Po Institute in Paramaribo. I have studied in Maastricht and hold a Bachelor degree in Translations in the Portuguese and French language.

After my studies I moved to Amsterdam and took a position at the Hewlett Packard European Customer Support Centre, first as a technical trouble-shooter and shortly after promoted to team leader. In these positions I gained a lot of knowledge and it was a great experience working in such a multi-cultural environment. After more than 5 years however I realized there was more to life than work and on January 1st 2000 I took the bold decision to quit my job and travelled through Central America before ending up on a small Honduran island in the Caribbean. A very beautiful environment where I have spent almost 3 years working as a dive master and later on opened up a small Thai restaurant. Once back in the Netherlands I searched for an opportunity where I could combine my organizational skills and my international experience and this is exactly what I found at MSM 13 years ago. Ever since I started working at MSM I was amazed by the mix of so many different nationalities in such a small and rather unknown institute. My passion for traveling was put on hold for a while but meeting so many different cultures at MSM it feels a bit like travelling all over the world every day.

I feel privileged being part of the life changing experience of our MBA students…
We welcome students from all over the world. This means our MBA students get challenged to develop their skills in a truly international and multicultural environment. For me working with such intercultural groups is very enriching and I feel privileged to be part of their life changing experience. I very much enjoy building a relationship with each one of them and I want to ensure they feel as comfortable as possible by helping them where necessary during their stay in Maastricht. This is something the students appreciate very much and they often call me their “MSM mom”. As a team we are organizing various social activities to enable the students to get to know the MSM staff and to increase the engagement of one big MSM family. And even though each year it’s difficult to say goodbye, I always find it exciting to meet the new group of MBA students and watch them becoming closer to each other each day.

What I mostly do in my spare time..
Enjoying the simple things in life…and let the chaos of today’s most challenging issues fade away. Dining out with friends, going for long walks and even picking up the travelling again, but now together with my daughter. Next planned trip? Bali… I am really looking forward to it!