Dorothea Wentz

At a journalism fair, I was once advised to study something “with actual substance” first – after all, you need something to write about later. So I started looking into law. And thought: this might be a bit like “Legally Blonde”. After all, everything at NEON is pink, too.

What still fascinates me about law are complex problems without an obvious answer. Doing things a certain way simply because they have always been done that way has never been for me. My approach is pragmatic: understand what someone actually wants to achieve, create structure and find a solution that works in practice – even if getting there requires an unconventional route.

Communication plays an important role in that. I like translating between “legal” and plain language, looking at situations from different perspectives and figuring out what really matters. I particularly enjoy working with clients who are genuinely excited about their own projects – that kind of enthusiasm is contagious.

Some of my best ideas come when I am drawing or with music in my ears. Spinning and Pilates, on the other hand, teach me to push my limits a little further and not give up at the first obstacle. Beyond that, I can happily spend hours talking about fashion, fantasy books, travelling, physics or astronomy. My happy place, however, is much closer to home: Berlin in summer.

One piece of advice has always stayed with me: stay true to yourself. There is rarely only one right way to get somewhere – and it is the different paths that make things interesting. That is also what I value at NEON: the openness and warmth of the people, the drive everyone brings to their work and a team I can rely on.

Because “that’s how we’ve always done it” has never been a particularly convincing argument to me.