Professor Andreas Rambow was born and raised in Germany where he began his career
as a soldier. He trained in Cologne and later worked at the German embassy in Washington
DC before he turned his attention to academia.
“I was 27 when I went to college,” he said. “That’s an age when most other people already have a degree and a career going for them. I started over from scratch.”
Professor Rambow first attended Northern Virginia Community College and went on to major in Finance at George Mason University. He later earned his MBA from Marymount University. Along the way, he met his wife and they returned to Europe to live in Brussels. Since then, Professor Rambow has taught at several colleges including the University of Maryland via their European military program. He’s also currently working towards his PhD at the American College of Education.
Professor Rambow began working at Webster Leiden in the autumn of 2016 and he teaches around four courses each academic year. One of his current classes is Basic Finance for Managers in the Management and Leadership program.
“It’s often the toughest class that my students take,” he said. “I make that very clear from the outset. We do financial statement analysis and bookkeeping so they learn how the numbers come about in a business’ annual report. As a leader in any organization, even a non-profit, you’ve got to be able to manage financial resources. That’s the whole purpose of the class.”
Another one of Professor Rambow’s courses is Organizational Behavior where students get to explore issues that they might encounter as leaders or managers during their careers. Rather than delve too far into theory, he prefers to focus on scenarios that are often common in the workplace.
“Leadership theory can be very abstract,” he said. “My primary message with this class is that it all comes down to the situation. To be a good leader, you’ve got to assess the situation and take appropriate action. It’s not always just caring about an employee. Sometimes you have to do difficult things like fire someone or kick them in the behind to motivate them to perform better.”
Over the past several decades, Professor Rambow has taught students and others how to improve their leadership skills so they can succeed in business, education, and other areas.
His advice to anyone about to begin their first or an entirely new career was this:
“Never assume that you know everything after you graduate from college. Learning is
a lifelong process and you need to be open to new ideas and challenges. If you don’t,
you won’t be successful. Follow your heart and don’t allow yourself to be pushed into
anything. Do what you’ve always wanted to do and give it your best shot.”
By Brandon Hartley