Being the first in an immigrant family who receives a degree and working in business development, consulting are challenging obligations with lots of responsibility. Dennis Tokarczyk’s path to a consulting business, meliorate, was sophisticated and full of ups and downs. Dennis shared with me his unique experience. In this rubric, I will share employees’ stories with you to better understand who and how works at meliorate. 

Dennis’s professional way started in childhood when he was a polish immigrant working family child. When he asked, “What is the highest I can reach?” the Tokarczyk family told a teenager choosing his life path, he could try to study. He felt an ambition to be the first to receive a degree and prove teen’s choice was right. When the study’s choice arose, Dennis preferred energy over everything else. “I always wanted to know how the energy system works because all of these power plants looked so great and mighty,” Dennis shared his emotions towards energy.  

Not only was he a pioneer in his family to receive a degree, but he also was one of the fourth group of graduates of Hochschule Hamm-Lippstadt. Tokarczyk researched this new founded university on his own and felt the chance to build it up. After gaining a Bachelor’s degree, he became fully employed at the university. Dennis shared that that amount of work connected to energy was vital for him because that was a topic he wanted to be fully engaged in. One of the most critical choices at that time was whether to continue studying. He decided on a Master’s degree in product and asset management because they had similar instruments but different specific knowledge. This knowledge was also beneficial for working in the energy field.  

Another crucial step in Tokarczyk’s life was moving to Hamburg with his girlfriend due to personal reasons. Here, Dennis started working at a company whose name would remain anonymous. He did business development and decision-making towards KPIs, Asset Management, but he did not realize that. Despite his work, the company performed adversely for ten years with billions of negative profits and eventually went bankrupt in 2018. However, he continued to search for his dream job and applied to process expert in an IT consulting company. This position was disappointing, though. It was tedious because IT-systems were altered twice a year and they never reach a full function state. Moreover, things got wilder when Corona hit. Unlike other companies, Dennis’ employment place had more orders. And overall, frustration and boreout made him make a story-altering decision – change the workplace. 

Tokarczyk maintained a positive relationship with his professor throughout his life, who always provided him with vital recommendations. Then, Lars Overdiek, meliorate’s managing director, contacted Dennis on Xing about the position in management consultancy. After personal research, meliorate’s devotion to Asset Management impressed Tokarczyk. Thus, he reached the professor who knew Lars, and he recommended trying a tough but captivating and advantageous job in consulting. But the moment when Dennis realized he wanted the position was after the first interview with Lars. During further interviews, he asked, “What will be my first biggest disappointment in meliorate?” Dennis received an answer, “Some people expect to rescue the world, changing everything in client’s company, but we also work on small parts of the big picture.” The answer matched with his expectations. Tokarczyk decided to cooperate with meliorate. 

Discipline is meliorate’s characteristic, which stunned Dennis. “I’m more chaotic in my personal life, so discipline is exhausting but rewarding,” he said it was the biggest benefit and challenge in working at meliorate. However, he treated such high-performance demand and structure as a learning process and not an obstacle to a satisfying job. He remains himself – a person who’s into football and spends time with his girlfriend watching Netflix or going out for a cake. Dennis misses a little chaos in his life, but he’s glad for some system where he can learn polish one day and create asset management strategies the other day.

Iryna Nykoriak

Published 10.06.2022

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