Frank Brinkschnei­der has spent more than three decades work­ing at the inter­sec­tion of sus­tain­abil­i­ty, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and dig­i­tal­iza­tion. His career spans envi­ron­men­tal con­sult­ing, the ear­ly ver­i­fi­ca­tion of sus­tain­abil­i­ty reports at KPMG, and the devel­op­ment of the Fair­trade cer­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem at FLOCERT. This sys­tem still serves as a cen­tral foun­da­tion for the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Fair­trade label. In senior roles, he fur­ther advanced dig­i­tal and risk-based assur­ance approach­es and sup­port­ed glob­al com­pa­nies in mak­ing their sup­ply chains trans­par­ent and future-ready in line with new Euro­pean reg­u­la­tions. Today, he advis­es orga­ni­za­tions seek­ing to demon­strate sus­tain­abil­i­ty in a robust, inde­pen­dent, and data-dri­ven way.

With this back­ground, Frank Brinkschnei­der joined Odona­ta 100 days ago—and is now shar­ing his first per­son­al reflec­tions.

I start­ed this jour­ney with great ener­gy, aim­ing to estab­lish Odona­ta as both a brand and an orga­ni­za­tion. From day one, the TourCert and KATE teams in Stuttgart wel­comed me warm­ly – with open­ness, pro­fes­sion­al­ism, and gen­uine col­le­gial­i­ty. I am impressed by how con­sis­tent­ly the val­ues that are often talked about are actu­al­ly lived in every­day prac­tice. This builds trust – both inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly.

A Strong Foun­da­tion for Growth
What I’ve learned in the first weeks: TourCert is a true brand. High cred­i­bil­i­ty, rec­og­nized stan­dards, and an excel­lent rep­u­ta­tion in the Ger­man-speak­ing region open doors in every con­ver­sa­tion. And the con­di­tions for Odona­ta could hard­ly be bet­ter:

• High­ly qual­i­fied audi­tors
• A tried-and-test­ed soft­ware solu­tion
• A strong brand back­ing us
• And a vibrant orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture

This com­bi­na­tion makes it real­is­tic to posi­tion Odona­ta as a B2B solu­tion for oth­er cer­ti­fiers and label­ing orga­ni­za­tions.

Lessons from the First 100 Days
Of course, there are chal­lenges. Our hope of secur­ing clas­sic seed fund­ing as a start-up did not mate­ri­al­ize for for­mal rea­sons – we are more of a spin-off than a start-up.

The key insight:
Our growth must come from oper­a­tional busi­ness.
Mar­ket inter­est is clear­ly there. Every time we make a con­nec­tion, the respons­es are con­sis­tent­ly pos­i­tive. Yet, very few peo­ple know our brand.
Our biggest task will be to make Odona­ta vis­i­ble and to intro­duce our offer­ings delib­er­ate­ly to small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es.

Look­ing Ahead
After 100 days, one thing is clear to me:
The direc­tion is right. We have the right part­ners, a strong foun­da­tion, and a team pas­sion­ate about sus­tain­able qual­i­ty. Now, it’s about turn­ing trust into vis­i­bil­i­ty.