Karl Baumann currently lives and works in Innsbruck, Austria. He was confronted with something special early in his life. Growing up in Tyrol in a family where his father played a key role in developing cross-country skiing, he also worked his way up to the Austrian junior national cross-country team (1991/92). His colleagues at that time would later become Olympic and world champions.
He attended the HTBLA (Higher Technical College for Electrical Engineering) in Saalfelden a. st. Meer, the school branch with the statistically highest dropout rate in Austria at the time, and was one of eight students to make it from first grade to the “Matura” (A-level diploma) (1994) without detention. This time would be formative for him.
He then decided to study business administration in Innsbruck to move away from technology and closer to people. This led to his focus in the second half of his studies on human resources and strategic management. He spent two semesters of the second half of his studies at Limerick University in Ireland through an ERASMUS program. A very enriching time, during which he also learned to know, understand, and love golf from an Irish perspective.
After completing his business studies (2000) and gaining initial professional experience in management consulting, he quickly realized that there were still many unanswered questions he wanted to find answers to. This led him to Graz to pursue his doctorate at Karl-Franzens University (2004). He subsequently conducted his research at the Institute for Organization and Learning at Leopold-Franzens University Innsbruck, the Institute for Control and Management at Karl-Franzens University Graz, the Institute for Higher Education Research at the Faculty of Interdisciplinary Research in Vienna, and the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at the CBS in Copenhagen.
In 2004, he was awarded the “Alps-Adriatic Science Prize” in Graz.
A brief but very valuable stint in one of the most renowned top management consulting companies, “Droege & Comp.” (2004/5), helped him significantly to further advance his consulting skills.
Based on that experience, he decided to further develop his creativity first in research and than develop his one consulting venture. He received a one-and-a-half-year top-level research grant (2005/6) from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Culture (BMBWK), in which he explored concepts and questions surrounding the connection between art and leadership in expert organisations.
Since 2006, he has been part of the international researchers, consultants, and artists network “AACORN – Art, Aesthetics, Creativity, and Organisations Research Network.”
Since 2007 he focuses on his work as a consultant, initiator, and project manager within his own company, “ckb“. In the course of this, he successfully managed and executed notable projects (at C-level) in multinational corporations, government, art & science organisations.
Since 2020, based on all this experience, he has been working on the vision of a healthy society based on a global democratic republic and founded the “IDGR – Institute for the Development of a Global Democratic Republic” in August 2023.