New Kid On The Block: Jackson

This week, Jackson Bond, our new Senior Manager Corporate Development,

tells us about his first few weeks at XING: Jackson, Corporate Development: I have been a XING member since 2004 and watched its growth with amazement. Before I joined XING I ran my own company in Berlin for seven years, specializing in speech recognition applications, with clients like VW, Daimler, BMW, DPD, Cable & Wireless and the Hamburg Public Transport company (HVV). After a larger UK competitor took over our company in 2007, it was my first opportunity to look seriously at younger, innovative technologies in the web 2.0 space. A few months ago a job description caught my eye on my XING home page. Now after my sixth week at XING? Wow! Never have I experienced the collaborative spirit and speed of integrating new employees and bringing them into the team and up to speed like I have experienced in my first days here. As I am a US citizen (married to a Swabian ) I also appreciate the international mix at XING.
I commute to work from Berlin where I live with my wife and two bilingual daughters. In Berlin I am involved in bilingual education. In ’98 I helped start eastern Berlin’s first bilingual Nursery school together with 10 families, now we have 100 kids in the Kita and started the first bilingual school last year. Here in Hamburg in CorpDev I continue to assess new opportunities for growing business, locally and around the world, as well as internally for business optimization potential. Being new to the team also brings a unique but fleeting advantage: we bring a new, outside perspective to the strengths and weaknesses of XING. Three powerful strengths I have found at XING so far: putting the user first in all business considerations, cross-departmental collaboration and openness to new ideas and a sense of urgency in the face of such a dynamic disruptive marketplace.

Interested in working at XING? Have a look at our job site – there are currently 39 job openings, including jobs in Jackson’s CorpDev team