Interview with Luca Hirschfeld

About Luca Hirschfeld

Luca Hirschfeld is half German, half Croatian, and grew up across the US, the UK, and Germany. He studied International Business for both his bachelor’s and master’s degree before beginning his career in consulting and later spending years across media and technology. He is now the CEO of InterNations, the world’s largest expat community network, where he leads the overall strategy, operations, and performance of the company.

The thread running through his entire journey is curiosity, continuous learning and development. That curiosity has shaped not only where he has been, but how he thinks about his career.

His education & background

After finishing high school in Germany, Luca wanted to study abroad. He chose Maastricht University in the Netherlands for his bachelor’s degree in international business, a degree he selected precisely for its breadth and the wide range of opportunities it offers. “It’s a relatively broad view into the business world,” he says. “You cover a lot of different topics, basically all the 101s of business”. He also completed a semester at the National University of Singapore.

What he particularly valued about his university experience was its case-based approach – real company problems, real questions; not just theoretical lectures. He carried that preference for the practical into his master’s at HEC Paris, also in International Business, where guest lecturers came straight from executive boards and a semester-long project for a major consulting company was part of the curriculum. His education, he says, has given him a global perspective on certain things, such as global markets and trends.

“My education was relatively generalist,” he says. “And that’s also what shaped the beginning of my career.”

His career journey

After various internships during his degree, he went into consultancy, and he approached it as less of a career choice and more as an opportunity to keep learning. He hadn’t come out of university knowing exactly what he wanted to do, and he says that was fine. “Some people want to go into marketing or HR or logistics or they have a desired department they want to work in. But being okay with being a generalist at the beginning and not having a niche to go into straight away. I think that’s completely okay, as long as you’re open and quick to learn.”

From consulting, he moved into various managerial positions in media and technology, spending years at large media corporations – big publishers and TV companies – before eventually becoming CEO of InterNations. It is a trajectory that was never mapped out in advance. “I’ve never been the person to have a 10-year plan,” he says.

What he wishes he had done more

When I asked Luca about any mistakes he may have made in his career, he explained that it’s less about making errors and more about opportunities to do even more. While he was at university, he wished he had paid closer attention to the business world happening outside the classroom. Understanding how companies are structured, how they are governed, and what is evolving in certain industries of interest.

“Pick up the business magazines, listen to podcasts, read newsletters and see what people are talking about, what’s interesting now, what are the conflicts in that space.”

“I started doing that more when I started working,” he says, “but I think I could have done that more in university as well. It just helps you understand reality a little bit more.” He is not suggesting it would have given him an edge, just a clearer picture of the world he was about to step into.

On Mentorship

Luca has never had one specific mentor throughout his career. Instead, he has found people at different stages and companies — more senior colleagues he looked to for guidance, some of whom he still turns to today. But he never walked into a new job on day one and asked someone to formally take him under their wing.

“Every person needs to define for themselves what they want from a mentor-mentee relationship,” he says. “How much time are you willing to put in? How much time does somebody else have to put in?” It is, he thinks, a more personal calculation than people give it credit for.

What has served him better, he says, is looking for a role model rather than a mentor. Not necessarily the person climbing fastest or being promoted most often, but someone whose work genuinely interests you — the colleague working on projects you find exciting, whose career path, detours included, makes you think: that’s interesting.

“Find somebody you think can be a good role model and have a chat with them,” he says. “See how they got to where they are, what steps they took, what detours they made.” It does not need to be formal. It does not need a label. A relationship built around genuine curiosity and conversation, he says, is what has helped him most throughout his career. “Additionally, your first couple of years are all about learning. Be a sponge, learn from the people around you. Ask questions, be interested, ask why certain things are done a certain way. Don’t be scared to voice an opinion. I understand it’s also a bit scary to maybe question certain things and stuff like that. And obviously, you don’t need to do it in the first day or week or month or anything like that. But bringing in that fresh perspective, questioning also the status quo. I think these are all super valuable things.”

On skills and the gap between university and work

The skill Luca says was the most valuable to him is structured communication, the ability to understand a problem, organise your thinking around it, and then present it clearly to whatever audience is in front of you. “Structuring your thoughts beforehand and then thinking about a way to transport your ideas in a way that is understandable for the audience you’re trying to address. I think that’s really critical,” he says. It is also, he points out, one of the things a university actually does prepare you for, if you let it.

On the question of building digital skills and keeping up with AI, he is honest about the difficulty. With AI developing so quickly, nobody can say with certainty which specific skills will still be relevant in two years. What he is more confident about is the enduring value of structured problem solving, and the human side of business things that cannot be automated because they involve how people feel, how they interact, and what they actually need.

“But also, business is not all Excel and numbers and charts There are also user needs and how people interact with each other, with the product, all of those things that those human emotions are involved.

I know that AI is a broad term; it fundamentally changes how people interact and has enormous potential across various industries. I think that we’re really just scratching the surface, and so much is happening every week or every month.”

On networking

Luca acknowledges that he did not network as much as he could have during university. At his business school, there were consulting, investment banking, sustainability clubs. He took part in some activities to a limited extent. His network formed more naturally, a group of friends who have stayed in the business world and stayed in touch. “If I were to do it again, I think I would try to do more of those,” he says, “because I think they really are valuable.” A strong professional network, he believes, is a genuine asset, not necessarily for finding jobs, but for knowing who to call when you have a question, and for hearing what is happening across different industries and companies.

“Everybody’s kind of in the same boat, but as careers progress, people go left, people go right, people get more senior. It’s not even about jobs; it’s more like, do you know someone in that space I could ask a question? Do you know someone at that company? And that’s when the network matters, not for jobs necessarily, but just knowing someone you can ask a question. It’s always easier than a cold call or email.”

On leadership

Leadership, he says, comes down to communication, expectation management, decisiveness, and transparency. It means being clear about what you want from your team and what they can expect from you. It means making decisions – whether they are seen as favourable, unfavourable, or difficult – because that is what people expect from a leader.

He challenges the notion that leadership is something you either have or you don’t. “It’s a skill,” he says. “It’s a skill that you need to develop.”

You don’t arrive at a senior role and suddenly know how to lead. You become a team lead, then a project lead, and you work at it, step by step, being diligent in every role. “I think that’s something I underestimated, it’s also a lot of work,” he adds. “Being a leader is not necessarily being the loudest in the room or having the spotlight. It’s about managing a wellfunctioning organization, supporting your teams to the best of your ability, enabling them to do good work, and fostering communication, openness, and transparency. Admitting mistakes is really important for leadership.”

“Leadership is something that you need to improve on. It’s a development and learning curve, but it’s also a lot of fun.”

What drives him

Luca did not come out of university planning to become a CEO. The title, he says, is not really the point. What motivates him is impact – on the organisation, on the service, on the people who use it – and continuous learning. Every job has taught him something, and that, more than any title or position, is what he wants to keep doing.

“If I manage to do that throughout my career,” he says, “I think I’ll be quite happy.”

His final words to students

At the end of the conversation, Luca offers the thing he most wishes someone had told him. Students worry enormously about their first job, specifically about making the wrong choice, going in the wrong direction, and getting it wrong from the start. He wants to tell us, as plainly as he can, that it matters far less than it feels like it does.

“The first job is never going to be the defining moment of your career,” he says. “You start somewhere, and then either you like it, or you move on, or you change.” Ten years from now, looking back, the path will make sense regardless of how it started. There are, he says, a thousand ways to get to where you are going.

“I would stress less. Not to stress too much about the very first steps in your career, either way, they won’t define you.”

Reassurance like this is often simpler to give than to embrace, but it carries special weight when it comes from someone who found his way without ever having a clear plan.