A Day with… Marleen, Commercial Manager Hydrogen — Import Terminal

Marleen Beerden studied mathematics, minoring in economics with a focus on the energy industry, and talked to E.ON at the E-world trade fair. Thereupon she started an internship in the field of gas storage at E.ON, and following on from this assumed a working student position. After completing her studies, she worked as a consultant at PWC, where her clients were primarily companies within the energy industry. During this role, she returned to Uniper in April 2016 via a project. Marleen has driven forward various initiatives within the gas storage sector, including storage evaluation and optimization, development of innovative storage products and development of a digital customer portal. 

By doing this, she discovered her strong interest in digitalization and became committed to pursuing the topic even further. Through developing the internal digitization initiative COODE, she was able to introduce an agile working model and implement digitalization initiatives. "Uniper acknowledges good ideas and gives employees the opportunity to put them into practice. I always have a lot of freedom to bring my ideas to the table and actively drive forward initiatives," says Marleen Beerden, Commercial Manager Hydrogen — Import Terminal at Uniper.

After her parental leave, Marleen was  ready for a new challenge and a field with great potential for growth: hydrogen. Since this future-oriented topic is already of great significance to Uniper and is set to become increasingly important in the next years, it's exactly the right choice for Marleen. In October 2022, she became Commercial Project Manager for the Green Wilhelmshaven subproject, which includes an ammonia import terminal and an ammonia cracker. Her main task for this project is to develop the business model from the ground up and demonstrate how Uniper can generate EBIT in the future through importing hydrogen derivatives. Since the import and conversion hydrogen derivatives such as ammonia are largely new processes, there is a lot to consider. 

"It's really exciting to work on such a current issue, and one where we can make a significant contribution to decarbonization. It's also exciting to be able to play a leading role in shaping the entire project and to be involved from the offset," she says. Since this business area needs to be established from scratch and business relationships have to be developed, Marleen's day-to-day tasks involve various meetings with external and internal stakeholders, discussions with grid operators, potential partners, and customers, business trips, events and conferences. To make all  this possible, she works in the project team with colleagues from different areas. The range of experiences and perspectives complement each other well, leading to exciting discussions and better results.

Marleen has appreciated the working atmosphere, open communication, flexible working model and diverse teams in both her old and new job. She is currently working part-time. "Of course, it's not always easy to strike a balance, but it's possible if you have support from your company and discipline yourself...and it's fun!" She adds: "It's great that Uniper continues to follow the flexible working model and that remote working has become a matter of course. But I also enjoy hopping on my bike in the morning and meeting colleagues in the office. There's always someone there, even if everything operates more flexibly nowadays."

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