Sabine Dall’Omo

In some ways, Sabine Dall’Omo represents an era that is slipping into history. When she first started work in Germany, it was common to stay in one job for decades, even for a lifetime. It seems unlikely that the 37 years she has devoted to the engineering giant Siemens will ever be matched by the jobhopping younger generations.

But as the CEO of its Sub-Saharan Africa operations, she’s quick to point out that behind that statistic lie many different roles in several countries. “Siemens is active all over the globe in different technologies, and I realised that if you move within Siemens, you can work within the same company, but have different jobs. I could move around different countries and see the world, but be with the same employer,” she says. There was really no need to change, she adds, because Siemens has given her an exciting technology ride as solutions evolved and digitised.