In 2000, Bernadette Conraths founded InterContext, the Brussels based consulting firm specialising in facilitating change and innovation in human resource development and higher education. In her consulting activities she works with business schools, higher education institutions and associations in Europe and worldwide, with a focus on leadership and strategy development, internationalisation, quality improvement. Since 2002 she is a Senior Adviser of the European University Association (EUA).
Before her move into consulting, Bernadette Conraths worked for ten years with the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), a large international non-profit network organisation serving the stakeholders of management education (universities, business schools, companies, consultancies a.o.).
She served first as a deputy director, then as Director General, launching the first European and international evaluation and accreditation scheme for management education institutions (EQUIS) and furthering the good practice exchange in management education world wide through conferences, projects, publications and information.
Prior to joining efmd, she built up the Department of External Relations of a then newly founded and today leading private German business school, WHU Koblenz, developing world wide institutional cooperation, European programmes, faculty and student exchange, media and company relations.
In her first career, Bernadette Conraths gained broad knowledge of the European and the international business and politics environment during ten years of work as a journalist and editor for leading German magazines (Wirtschaftswoche, GEO, manager magazin a.o.).
She has studied political science and communication in Berlin and Brussels, graduating from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, including a traineeship at the European Commission, and getting on-going professional development throughout her career. German born, she is fluent in four languages, with working knowledge of two more, and travelled extensively in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia.
Bernadette Conraths lives with her husband and business partner Dr. Gerrit Knodt, a US- citizen and senior human resource development expert, in Belgium and Germany.
