Fabienne Bathel is a Senior Consultant based in Inverto’s Riyadh office. In this article, she reflects on her first three years at Inverto, from balancing consultancy alongside her studies to building an international career.
This article discusses:
- How an internship became an international consulting career.
- What early responsibility looks like at Inverto, and the support that comes with it.
- How flexibility and international opportunities have shaped Fabienne’s progression.
Fabienne Barthel
Senior Consultant in Riyadh
From Munich to Copenhagen to Riyadh, Fabienne’s first three years at Inverto have been shaped by international opportunities, new challenges, and the support to take them on. Here, she reflects on the experiences that have shaped her journey so far.
When Fabienne joined Inverto as an intern in Munich, she was halfway through a master’s degree. Three years later, she is a Senior Consultant in Riyadh.
Along the way, she balanced a working student role alongside her studies, travelled regularly to London, moved to Copenhagen, worked on projects across Sweden and Finland, and built the experience that eventually took her to the Middle East.
Looking back, there is no single moment that explains how it happened. Instead, there was a series of opportunities that appeared one after another, and support that gave her the confidence to take them.
An internship that looked different to what she expected
Fabienne joined Inverto during a semester break while studying for her master’s degree in Lisbon. Her internship was based out of Munich, but the project itself was in London – almost immediately, she found herself travelling regularly between the two. That was the first surprise.
I didn’t expect as an intern that you could travel and that you would get staffed on international projects.
Coming from industry, she had assumed an internship would be more local. More office-based. More focused on observation. Instead, she became part of an international project team.
What stands out most when she talks about that experience is not the travel itself, but the effort people made to include her.
As an intern you feel like someone who is just there learning something and asking a lot of questions. But they actually valued me a lot.
This support remained strong even when travelling to London involved additional complexity.
They were always making sure I’m part of the team.
When the internship came to an end, the relationship with the project did not. The team offered her the opportunity to continue as a working student while completing her master’s degree. For seven months, she continued working on the same client.
Instead of starting again, she was able to keep building on the relationships, knowledge and experience she had already developed.
Responsibility comes early, but not without support
At Inverto, ownership and responsibility come early on, but you get close support from your team to help you learn how projects work, understand expectations, and build confidence.
There will always be, especially at the beginning, a Senior Consultant or Project Manager who’s guiding you.
Alongside that guidance came something else: feedback. A lot of feedback.
The best thing about it is that your team always provides you with feedback.
Whether it was after a client session, a workshop or a piece of project work, feedback was part of the process.
You get spot-on feedback which accelerates and pushes your development a lot.
Building a support network from day one
When Fabienne talks about support at Inverto, she rarely talks about a single person. She describes a network. One of her earliest experiences was when all new joiners from across the business came together in one place for a week of joint onboarding.
You get to know a lot of people, and they are all in the same position as new starters, which helps a lot.
The benefit extended beyond the training itself. As she moved between offices and countries, she often already knew somebody wherever she went.
If you’re travelling to a new office, you always know someone there.
Alongside formal onboarding sessions, she also had access to a buddy who could help answer questions and explain how the company works. Looking back, she sees that support network as one of the reasons moving between offices felt easier.
There’s a really big network that you can reach out to and that’s supporting you.
The thing she would do differently
One thing has changed most over the last three years: how Fabienne approaches the learning curve that comes with consulting.
Early in her career, she sometimes compared her progress with colleagues who had significantly more experience. Looking back, she recognizes that the first few months are designed to feel challenging. There is a lot to learn, and becoming comfortable with that is part of the development process.
Every consultant starts somewhere. Feeling challenged isn’t a sign that you’re not capable; it’s often a sign that you’re growing.
She also learned that progressing quickly does not mean solving every problem independently. One of the earliest pieces of feedback she received was not to spend hours trying to work something out alone when somebody else could help her move forward.
I would have asked for support earlier instead of trying to solve everything by myself.
Now, having worked alongside interns herself, she sees how rapidly people progress during those first few months. New joiners ask questions, make mistakes, apply feedback and improve – often much faster than they realize.
Growing with the company
After finishing her master’s degree, Fabienne was initially offered a role in Germany. Inverto’s flexibility gave her the opportunity to join the Copenhagen office instead, where she spent around a year and a half working across Sweden and Finland.
The next career move came through a connection she had made years earlier. The Managing Director she had worked with during her internship was planning to launch Inverto’s Riyadh office. The opportunity to be part of building a new office from the ground up was an exciting challenge. She applied and joined the founding team.
Today, she is based in Saudi Arabia. When she looks at the path from Munich to Copenhagen to Riyadh, one theme appears repeatedly: flexibility.
Inverto is flexible when it comes to growth and opportunities
She believes that flexibility is one of the things that makes the company different. There is structure and progression, but there is also room to shape your own path.
At Inverto, progression isn’t about waiting for a role to open up. It’s driven by your development.
Three years after joining as an intern, she still finds that exciting. Not because she knows exactly what comes next, but because experience has shown her that opportunities can emerge from conversations, relationships and simply being willing to say yes when something interesting appears.
13th August 2026
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