When Sabine Sparwasser retires in less than two years, she can look back on a long and successful career in the Federal Foreign Office. But the job of a diplomat is tough. “You have to be resilient and be able to stand pressure,” she tells the star podcast “Die Boss”. Sparwasser changes positions every one to three years and lives in Bonn, Berlin, London, Ottawa, Brussels and Costa Rica. “Moving after a divorce or the loss of a family member is the most traumatic experience in people’s lives,” she reports from a psychological report by the Federal Foreign Office.
Sparwasser has been an ambassador in Canada for six years. Most recently, she accompanied the three-day government trip of Chancellor Scholz and Vice-Chancellor Habeck through the country. The meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau was about closer cooperation in the energy policies of both countries. “That was the solidarity of the democracies,” she reports.
When two attacks were carried out on the German missions in Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul in 2016 and 2017, Sparwasser was special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Afghanistan was definitely the most difficult time for me,” she says. Western countries like Germany and the USA withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021. Since then, the Taliban have taken control of the country happened, I was no longer responsible for it, but I experienced it as very painful,” reports Sparwasser.
In this episode of “Die Boss” you can find out why Sabine Sparwasser is behind the German-Canadian trade agreement CETA and why she had long seen herself as the perfect number two.
At “The Boss – Power is Female” top women speak among themselves: hostess and multi-board member Simone Menne (BMW, Deutsche Post DHL, Henkel, among others) meets female bosses from all areas of society to talk to them about their lives and careers. “Die Boss” appears fortnightly on Wednesdays on stern.de and the stern YouTube channel as well as on RTL and all common podcast platforms.
