Entry Year: 2024
Education
• BA Media and Creative Industries Management, accadis University
• MSc Management, WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management
Professional and academic background
During her bachelor studies in Media & Creative Industries Management, Maria spent a semester at the Ocean University of China in Qingdao. She co-founded a start-up hub and co-working space in the wider Frankfurt area and went on to intern in strategy roles for Henkel and Bain & Company during her master's. While at WHU, she also completed a semester at Waseda University in Tokyo. For three years prior to starting the PhD programme, Maria worked for DK, an imprint of the publisher Penguin Random House, most recently as a Senior Group Strategy Manager. At DK, Maria oversaw all consumer testing and insights activities, including survey research involving over 80.000 readers in the US, UK and Germany. Her master's thesis focused on the impact of anthropomorphism on consumers' willingness to adopt complex technological products and was presented at the 2023 EACR conference in Amsterdam.
Preliminary research interests
Maria is researching human decision-making and interactions with artificial intelligence. Her current research projects focus on consumer reactions to AI and on how companies can turn the usage of AI in creative processes into long-term competitive advantages.
