Team

Program Directors and Lead Researchers are Prof. Dr. Michael Frese and Prof. Dr. Michael Gielnik, who are supported by a team of researchers and field coordinators, as well as student assistants.

Prof. Dr. Michael Frese

  • Prof. Dr. Michael Frese

Michael Frese holds a joint appointment at Asia Business School, Malaysia and Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Germany. His research spans a wide range of basic and applied topics within organizational behaviour and work psychology. Most important are his longitudinal studies on psychological effects of unemployment, impact of stress at work, predictors of personal initiative, as well as psychological success factors of entrepreneurs. He is also known for his (cross-national) research on innovation. His field studies on errors, error management, and error management culture have received wide attention. In addition, he is studying training - most importantly the concept of error management training, leadership training, and training to improve entrepreneurial success and personal initiative. Most recently, he has done studies on cultural factors in organization and across nations as well as research that looks at psychological success factors in entrepreneurs in developing countries (Africa, Latin America, and Asia) and in Europe.

Prof. Frese has been selected as a Fellow at the Academy of Management (AOM). The fellowship recognises and honours members of the AOM who have made significant contributions to the science and practice of management. He is also selected as a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, one of the oldest academies in the world. It selects outstanding scientists – in natural sciences, life sciences, behavioural and empirical social sciences, and the humanities – who play a crucial role in advising and guiding policymakers.

Prof. Frese has authored about 200 peer reviewed journal articles and approximately 200 book chapters and was editor/​author of about 30 books and special issues. While Michael Frese has received a multitude of awards, he most recently accepted the 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award of Organizational Behaviour Divison from the Acadamy of Management. He is Germany’s most frequently cited work and organizational psychologist and business and management scientist, and one of the most frequently cited Europeans.

Prof. Dr. Michael Gielnik

  • Prof. Dr. Michael Gielnik

Michael M. Gielnik is Professor of HR Development at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. He studied psychology at the University of Giessen and received his PhD from the Leuphana University of Lüneburg. He was a Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore Business School. He had research stays at the University of the Western Cape (South Africa) and the University of Sydney (Australia).

His research focuses on the psychology of entrepreneurship, in particular cognitive and motivational success factors in entrepreneurship, as well as entrepreneurship training and transfer. He is particularly interested in entrepreneurship in low- and middle-income countries. He has conducted several research and practice projects in different countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Michael has published his research in leading international journals, such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. Together with Michael Frese and Melissa S. Cardon, he has co-edited the book “Psychology of Entrepreneurship: New Perspectives”. Michael serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Business Venturing and as a member of the Editorial Review Board of Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice.

Carina Bohlayer

  • Carina Bohlayer

Carina is passionate about creating a positive impact via entrepreneurship and empowering people. After studying business administration and management & entrepreneurship, she gained several years of experience in the private sector with positions in consulting and human resources (McKinsey, Tchibo). Since 2018, she is pursuing her PhD at Leuphana University Lueneburg, focusing on the promotion of sustainable entrepreneurship and on understanding how entrepreneurs deal with problems and crises. Carina is our project manager for the Student Training for Entrepreneurial Promotion in South Africa and responsible for the development of STEP S (STEP Sustainability), including pilot implementations in Uganda and South Africa.

Tabea Brüning

  • Tabea Brüning

Tabea studied Economics at the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg (B.A.) and Management & Business Development at the Leuphana University in Lüneburg (M.Sc.). During her master’s studies, she was already involved in the organization of a PI Training in Zimbabwe and in the acquisition of a World Bank research project on PI Training in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In October 2020, she completed her master's degree with a qualitative follow-up study on a large-scale research project on PI Training in Togo. Since then, she has been working as a research assistant at the Institute of Management and Organization at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg and is responsible for the development of a community platform for people interested in the PI & STEP Training. In the context of her PhD thesis, which she is writing under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Michael Frese, she would like to explore the question of how entrepreneurship in developing countries can be promoted even more effectively through entrepreneurship training.

Paul Jasper Herrmann

  • Paul Jasper Herrmann

After vocational training in industrial management, in 2017 Paul graduated with a B.A. in Social Economics from the University of Hamburg. During his studies and after graduation, he worked as a product manager for a software startup for two years. In 2021, Paul graduated with a M.A. in International Business with a focus on SMEs from Technische Hochschule Rosenheim. During his master studies he participated as a student assistant at ROCkET, the Rosenheim Center for Entrepreneurship, where he was then fully employed as a startup coach. The inspiring environment quickly tempted him to start his own company. Since July 2022 he is pursuing his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Micheal Gielnik. Within his research, Paul is interested in entrepreneurship training at secondary schools, how to develop early entrepreneurs’ mindsets and what would be the best concept to teach entrepreneurship including future school teachers. Currently he is working on an implementation approach to bring STEP to secondary schools in Nigeria.

Elisabeth Kuria

  • Elisabeth Kuria

Elisabeth became part of the STEP team as a research assistant for the STEP Training in Uganda at Makerere University. Directly afterwards (2019), she joined the research team under Prof. Dr. Michael Gielnik to pursue her PhD. Elisabeth was responsible for the STEP Trainings in Nigeria, Mozambique, and the Philippines. She is currently responsible for STEP in Kenya at Mount Kenya University and Kenyatta University and the PI Training project in the DRC under Prof. Dr. Michael Frese, which is targeted towards female micro-entrepreneurs, who participate in the training either independently or together with their husbands (2020-2024). In her research, she is interested in the fields of female entrepreneurship, networks, and social identity.

Mona Hafner

    Mona became part of Leuphana University for her Master's degree (M.Sc.) in Management and Business Development. During her final year, she worked as a research assistant for the STEP Training in Kenya and also built her Master's thesis around this topic. Directly afterwards (2020), she joined the research team under Prof. Dr. Michael Frese to pursue her PhD. Mona is currently responsible for a PI Training project in the DRC, which is targeted towards female micro-entrepreneurs, who participate in the training either independently or together with their husbands (2020-2024). In her research, she is interested in the fields of female entrepreneurship and training transfer.

    Janina Peschmann

    • Janina Peschmann

    Janina studied Business Psychology (B.Sc.) and Management & Human Resources (M.Sc.) at the Leuphana University in Lüneburg. During her master's, she started working for the STEP (Student Training for Entrepreneurial Promotion) project and was mainly responsible for supervising research assistants and organising the evaluation of the STEP trainings in various African countries (e.g., Uganda, Kenya, South Africa). For her master's thesis, she collected data on teamwork processes during the STEP training in South Africa. Since October 2021, she is pursuing her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Michael Gielnik. Within her research, she is mainly looking at how teamwork influences entrepreneurship training success, the effects of entrepreneurship trainings on long-term business success and women entrepreneurship. She is currently responsible for developing a version of the STEP training that focuses on women empowerment as part of two World Bank projects in Burkina Faso and Niger.

    Benjamin Scharweit

    • Benjamin Scharweit

    Benjamin joined the team in 2017 and has been in charge of the following projects: PI Training in combination with an agricultural hard-skills training for female farmers in Mozambique, PI Training for female factory workers in Ethiopia, STEP Training for university students in Lebanon, PI Training in combination with a trading support intervention for female small-scale traders in Burkina Faso, PI Training in combination with a financial and life skills training for adolescent girls and young women in Niger. He has worked for The World Bank and FAO to design and evaluate training interventions and has held train-the-trainer workshops in Eswatini, South Africa, and Uganda. He holds a master's degree in Economics from the Freie Universität Berlin.

    Jakob Weers

    • Jakob Weers

    After studying business psychology (M.Sc.), Jakob joined Leuphana and the STEP team in 2017 to pursue his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Michael Gielnik. He was responsible for the development, implementation, and evaluation of the STEP curriculum for student teachers in Uganda (2017-2020) and is currently working on a digitalized version of the STEP training as part of the Startup Port (https://startupport.de/). In his research, he is focusing on the transfer of (entrepreneurship) training outcomes and on dynamic theories of self-regulation.

    Student Assistants & Administration

    • Donald Mekountchou

    Administration

    • Astrid Enge

    Student Assistants

    Anna Klaas, Moritz Michalowski, Vanessa Hartwig, Matthieu Phalip