Life At Bonnier - GROW

GROW Participants for 2012 Announced

By Bert Menninga on 2011-12-07
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Coming from all over Bonnier, a select group of employees will be spending three months at another job in another country under Bonnier’s global exchange program GROW.

Bonnier's exchange program has announced the participants for 2012. The GROW program allows employees to work in another job, another company and another country, it's a full cultural experience. First held in 2009, the program remains extremely popular - this year some 179 people applied for the 20 original positions announced.

Meet Irene Hartsmar

By Bert Menninga on 2011-10-24
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TV4 veteran spreads her wings with GROW in the British book business.

Irene Hartsmar is a real veteran at Swedish TV channel TV4, with 15 years under her belt there.

Meet Jakob Lönnborg

By Bert Menninga on 2011-10-21
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GROW participant takes on Beijing, a city where the pace of change is unsurpassed.

When Jakob Lönnborg landed in Beijing at the beginning of September, he found things weren't as he remembered. "I was here ten and five years ago and have now returned to a completely different city," Lönnborg says.

Meet Tomaz Lampret

By Bert Menninga on 2011-10-20
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GROW participant Tomaz Lampret finds passion and creativity in Finland.

Waking up one Monday morning in a new country, a new city and walking for the first time to Bonnier Publications Oy in Finland where Tomaz Lampret didn't know anybody was a big step. "Taking a deep breath and the first smile from a new coworker definitely helped," says Lampret, who is in Helsinki for three months under the GROW program. Normally he works at business daily Finance in Slovenia.

Meet Tina Cliffoord

By Bert Menninga on 2011-10-18
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Managing traffic in Sweden and the U.S. is the same - but different, says GROW participant Tina Cliffoord.

Different titles, same job - almost. And not quite the same tasks, but the same goal. That's how Tina Cliffoord describes her time as a GROW participant at Bonnier Corporation, at the TransWorld offices in California.

"Back home at Bonnier Tidskrifter I'm the traffic manager and responsible for print-ready material, ads and inserts and everything connected to them," says Cliffoord.

Meet Jussi Hakanen

By Bert Menninga on 2011-10-06
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GROW participant meets American TV - and alligators - when he trades Finland for Florida.

For someone who grew up on American pop culture, moving from Helsinki to Florida has been a dream come true. "All my life I've loved Happy Days, action movies, Springsteen, Seinfeld, Conan, NBA, HBO, etc.," says Jussi Hakanen, who is working at Bonnier Corporation for three months under the GROW program.

Meet Steffen Meier

By Bert Menninga on 2011-09-28
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GROW participant takes a chance to think differently.

Reflecting on life, making new goals, getting to know another way of living.

Meet Lindsey Atkinson

By Bert Menninga on 2011-09-27
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GROW participant bikes her way through Munich.

It's all a matter of rights, says Lindsey Atkinson. A photo librarian at Bonnier Corporation in Florida, Atkinson is used to dealing with photo rights. But for three months she is trading pictures for books, and Winter Park for Munich, Germany, where she faces new challenges at publishing house Piper Verlag.

Meet Alex Pedersen

By Bert Menninga on 2011-09-22
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Alex Pedersen trades Copenhagen for Winter Park, where his co-workers go waterskiing at lunch.

The heat and humidity of Florida may be extreme for some, but for Alex Pedersen of Copenhagen, it's been anything but daunting. "This doesn't even come close to the weather in Denmark, and I absolutely love it!" Pedersen says.

Pedersen is spending three months at Bonnier Corporation in Winter park, working as a marketing project manager, helping decide on a new cause marketing campaign.

Meet April Robertson-Ring

By Bert Menninga on 2011-09-14
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Taking in the history and learning new ways of communicating, April Robertson-Ring makes the most of three months in Stockholm.

April Robertson-Ring is not a city person. "I come from the panhandle of Florida, which is really the rural south and not the Florida that most people think of," says Robertson-Ring, who is living in Stockholm for three months under Bonnier's GROW program. Which was one of the reasons she decided to apply for GROW: She wanted to challenge herself, and she thought that Stockholm would be a good way to get a taste of city life very different from her life in Winter Park at Bonnier Corporation.