Business consultant by day – home brewer by night: Meet Maud Betbeder
Before Maud Betbeder came to NIRAS, she had an affinity for the food & beverage sector and knew that she wanted to work on exciting international projects, preferably within the brewing industry. Now, she’s a veritable beer enthusiast who brews at home and works to understand the technical and scientific process of brewing so that she can leverage her knowledge within business consulting to ensure a 360 degree service to our customers.
From supply chain audits to feasibility studies and greenfield design in Central and South America, East Asia and Africa, Maud Betbeder is facilitating decision-making for our clients to reach their objectives and resolve their challenges.
Here’s the story of how she joined NIRAS, what led to her passion for brewing, and how she found an international perspective in a Danish company while developing her business consulting skills.
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After a longer process of waiting for the right projects to mature and create a perfect match for her quite unique profile, Maud Betbeder joined NIRAS in November 2022 as business consultant with focus on collaboration between NIRAS Food & Beverage in DK and our UK business unit.
The rest is pretty much history, because since then, Maud has been doing what she does best – building bridges between our offerings around business consulting and our technical expertise. Which is not an “off the shelf” trait because most people are either one or the other. Most people also don’t brew beer at home, but we’ll get back to that.
Unknown territory? Let’s go there!
There have been several forks in the road on Maud’s professional journey. And they have led her to new countries, cultures, and companies. In just a few years, she had circled the globe, from the southwest of France, where she’s from, to the North of France (Lille), where she did her Bachelor’s in Finance and Master’s in Business Management including an Erasmus year in Spain. Luxembourg was the second step abroad, for an internship in supply chain controlling at Ferrero, followed by an Australian experience, working as a business consultant for a financial advisory company which truly changed her life and professional goals.
Finally, she went to Canada for her MBA. In Quebec, she started working for a kombucha company and here, her affinity for the food & beverage industry started to grow into a real passion for the beverage sector and more specifically fermented beverages, like kombucha and beer.
”This period really underlined how much I thrive on travelling and interacting with different cultures and people, and how much I change to make a change in the world, working on meaningful projects.”
”This period really underlined how much I thrive on travelling and interacting with different cultures and people, and how much I change to make a change in the world, working on meaningful projects.”
Finding “life equilibrium” in the most unlikely of places
Being from the South of France, settling down in Copenhagen was not exactly in the cards for Maud, she decided to turn the map upside down and go to Denmark because “well I hadn’t visited the Nordics yet, so of course I had to see what that was like”.
And sometimes, you find what you didn’t know you were looking for where you least expect it.
“Coming to Copenhagen was a strange experience because it just felt like coming home. In terms of “life equilibrium”, work-life balance, safety and peoples’ overall mentality, Denmark, and Copenhagen in particular, is just the best place I’ve been. Really, the only downside is the climate, but I’m slowly learning to enjoy even that”.
As a start, Maud got a job for the French Embassy in Copenhagen (serving both Denmark and Sweden) and because of COVID, she couldn’t experience the cultural interactions with clients, prospects and colleagues as much as she should have. At the Embassy, she was building a bridge between France and the Nordics, working with business development and advisory functions within healthcare, sports, and consumer goods – covering everything except food & beverage.
Over time, the wish to get closer to her passion and the need to go back to what she really wanted to do – business consulting –prompted Maud to start looking for new opportunities.
“Coming to Copenhagen was a strange experience because it just felt like coming home. In terms of “life equilibrium”, work-life balance, safety and peoples’ overall mentality, Denmark, and Copenhagen in particular, is just the best place I’ve been. Really, the only downside is the climate, but I’m slowly learning to enjoy even that”.
The perfect match
The opportunity to work for NIRAS was a gamechanger for Maud. Until now, it hadn’t been possible to find that one company where it was possible to work internationally, with food & beverage, and where she could use and cultivate her business consulting profile but also learn from colleagues working with the technical aspects and the engineering perspective.
“I found all that here, and more, because my journey here has also allowed me to work with the green energy transition (GREENsition). There is a lot we can do in terms of helping breweries reduce their water consumption and invest in green energy, which is both professionally interesting and personally fulfilling.”
As a business consultant in engineering projects, her responsibilities on projects are very broad – from assisting clients in achieving their carbon neutrality objectives as part of feasibility studies, to supporting project management and design coordination in greenfield projects, or to facilitating decision-making by working on business cases. And there’s more to come, with endless possibilities and business consulting being one of the top priorities in our Process Industry.
Craft-brewing at home - fountain of brewing knowledge at work
Maud has been working solely with beer projects since joining NIRAS, and it has fueled her passion for this industry even more – so much so that she is now brewing from her own kitchen (and from ‘Kapslen’, NIRAS’ internal brewing club). The hobby helps her understand the workings of beer, and the knowledge, apart from bring fun, enables her to be an even better advisor to the customers she’s working with.
“I’m really fascinated by the process of brewing. It’s such a delicate process and you need to understand the workings of it really well in order to get a good product. It’s become a new challenge to understand beer and beer production from a scientific and technical standpoint. And since beer is my main focus at work, my hobby at home serves the purpose well. I am fascinated how our combination of brains (engineer and business) is so enriching and adds value to all projects, not to mention the global aspect which is what I was looking for”.
We’re happy to have Maud on board and excited to see what see where her journey with NIRAS will take her!
Reach out if you have any questions
