About

Barbara Rübel is the Managing Partner of Brand Essence AG.  
She has over 20 years of industry experience working for global corporate brands, as a consultant to startups and as a personal branding coach.  She has lived or worked in Asia, Europe and the United States and has the multicultural background and experience to understand the balance needed between building a strong brand globally and adapting to the needs and requirements of your local country operations.  

Barbara is an ETH lecturer offering a credit-giving course on “Personal Branding and Storytelling” to master students. ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) is currently ranked as the #6 university in the world and #1 on continental Europe.

Barbara worked for four years for the Zurich Insurance Company as the Global Head of Corporate Identity and Internal Marketing.  There she was responsible for maintaining a consistent brand globally and ensuring that the 60,000 employees understood the brand and the value of the various central and local brand activities.  Before this, she spent over 20 years working for the General Motors Corporation for many brands (Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Vauxhall, Opel), in several countries and at the country, regional and global level.  Among her various assignments, she had responsibility for the future product market research team at Opel, she marketed both niche and high volume vehicles at Vauxhall and she was head of brand strategy at Chevrolet Europe where she initiated many innovative brand activation programs.

Barbara has a MBA in Marketing and Finance from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Management from Kettering University.  She also developed an extensive knowledge of digital marketing by taking courses at the Cambridge Marketing College.  Barbara is also on the Board of the ETH Entrepreneur Club and the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN) of Switzerland.