Driven by her desire to help build stability through economic development, Dr. Petra Seidler has spent more than two decades trying to bring peace to countries during or after war or a natural disaster. Being a change management consultant, she is currently working as a team leader with COWI (Denmark) in Ukraine for the European Investment Bank (EIB) financed project, “Ukraine Municipal Infrastructure Programme.” Dr. Seidler provides independent finance and management, consulting services, executive management, utilities and infrastructure development, and public relations and media management. She is working in countries such as Afghanistan, Armenia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Egypt and Syria as a government-level project manager in donor-financed projects.
From 2006 to 2010, Dr. Seidler was the project director and change management consultant for the corporatization and commercialization of the new Afghan national power utility, “Da Afghanistan Breshna Sherkat (DABS),” which today, is a company with more than 7,000 employees. The work was funded by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Since then, she has been working on rebuilding infrastructures like the power sector, water supply, road construction, irrigation and flood protection, and school construction in six northern provinces of Afghanistan. The funds were provided by the German government through the German Development Bank KfW. Dr. Seidler was successfully serving as a team leader and the head of the Regional Infrastructure Development Fund Programme until mid-2018. Since then, she started to support the ambitious programme in Ukraine with a total financing budget of 800 million euros. All of the projects she was implementing in the past 20 years are dedicated to both infrastructure development and capacity building.
One of the highlights of Dr. Seidler’s career was timing the contracts between Afghanistan and Uzbekistan to bring electricity to Afghanistan between 2009 and 2010. Watching the lights go on in Kabul, Afghanistan, and knowing what a difference this would make in the people’s lives was extraordinary. She is also proud of the fact that she opened the Dr. Petra German Medical Clinic in Afghanistan in fall 2017 to offer gynecology and obstetrics services for Afghan women. Currently, the clinic is under the process of reorganization to become a fully women-driven clinic dedicated to women.
To prepare for her long and distinguished career, Dr. Seidler earned a dual PhD in international economic relations and finance credit procurement from the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia. She is a Russian chartered translator and interpreter, and a certified expert of consolidation. Dr. Seidler is fluent in German, English and Russian, and also speaks basic Dari.
In recognition for her achievements, Dr. Seidler earned several commendations including the Silver Medal of St. Peter of Honour from the Russian Orthodox Church in 2008 for charity and for founding and implementing the Easter Music Festival in St. Petersburg from 1992 to 1998. Furthermore, she is featured among Elite Women Worldwide and as a Top Female Executive and has received the Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Seidler was recognized by IAOTP in New York as Top Consultant of the Year and Empowered Women of the Year in 2019, and Consultant of the Decade in 2020. She attributes her success to being a results-oriented individual, and to her recognition and respect for cultural diversity.
Moving forward, Dr. Seidler wishes to continue her project as the team leader of consultancy services to the prime minister’s strategy unit of the Ukraine Municipal Infrastructure Program at European Investment Bank/COWI in Kyiv, Ukraine. She would also like to write, teach and mentor children, as well as to seek great challenges. If she could offer some advice to the younger generations, it would be to take responsibly for failures, learn from them and move on. In her spare time, Dr. Seidler enjoys writing, swimming, diving, painting and music.