.gif){kind=small}
Dr. Tom Kinzel was appointed Executive Director of the German Chemical Society (GDCh), one of the world’s largest chemistry organizations, in August 2024. Here, he talks with Dr. Vera Koester for ChemistryViews about his thoughts and visions for the GDCh, emphasizing the importance of volunteer work, collaboration, and adapting to the changing environment and needs of the community for today’s chemical societies.
What do you enjoy most about your new job at the GDCh?
For me, it is a perfect mixture of purpose, challenges, and freedom.
First of all, I like that what we do has a real purpose that I strongly identify with, which is very important to me. As Executive Director, I enjoy the freedom to make decisions and the challenges that keep the work engaging. Without challenges, it would be boring; without freedom, we could not accomplish much. I do, of course, align with the board, which allows us to get things done.
|
The German Chemical Society (GDCh) aims to promote chemistry and related sciences, facilitate scientific exchange, enhance understanding of chemical relationships, and foster collaboration among scientists, educators, and professionals across academia, research, industry, and business. The GDCh has around 28,000 members and a headquarters in Frankfurt. The society is built on its members, who organize themselves into 27 divisions (Fachgruppen), such as the Liebig Association for Organic Chemistry and the Wöhler Association for Inorganic Chemistry. Beyond these divisions, the GDCh has around 60 local sections (Ortsverbände) and 55 regional forums of the Young Chemists Network (JCF), mostly based at universities, connecting chemists in their regions. The Frankfurt headquarters, led by the GDCh management, supports members by organizing conferences, facilitating international outreach, managing membership services and public relations, and publishing the Nachrichten aus der Chemie magazine. |
What are your plans and main goals as Executive Director?
Some of the goals that I have are more internal regarding the headquarters, the way it is set up, and how it is operating, and other goals are in evolving the society. Like in a normal business, the environment is changing, and we need to adapt to stay relevant, to really provide the value that we create for the chemical community and continue to do so.
So, internally, one goal is the ongoing digitalization of the GDCh. We have some processes that are very state-of-the-art and we have processes that are not at all. For example, we are looking at the membership journey. Where are the touchpoints between the members and the headquarters, and how can we make communication with members faster, clearer, and more efficient, while also making our services more attractive internationally and setting it up in a way that we can fulfill future members’ expectations even better?
Similarly, we look at the volunteer touchpoints. How can we make their work easier? We have a lot of volunteers, and most of the services and products of the GDCh would not be possible without them. The board itself is made up of volunteers, as are the boards of the divisions, award commissions, and so on and so forth. And many essential tasks, though less visible, are also carried out by volunteers. The staff would not be able to do all that, not just because we cannot hire more people since that would go beyond our budget, but more importantly because the volunteers bring a great deal of expertise.
Volunteer work is something you cannot replace with something else. It is something that is scarce. There are not that many volunteers and volunteers have the choice of where to volunteer. This means for me, that we really need to make volunteer work attractive to be able to compete – I want the best volunteers working for the GDCh.
What do you think makes a chemical society relevant today for the members?
I believe the environment is changing a lot, which has an impact on our membership base and how we can find and retain members, and also the way that we interact internationally with other societies, with other stakeholders if you will, and how we collaborate to really generate the value that we want to generate.
We do see that the idea of being a member of a society and what it means has changed over the years. In the past, 30, 40, 50 years ago, there were not many other opportunities to connect other than the society, and then you have this platform effect, meaning if all your peers are in it, then you are also going to be part of it.
Today, there are a lot of other ways to connect with each other. So, people might not immediately see the value of becoming a member of a society. You could simply connect with people on LinkedIn, for example. Then you are also part of a network and there you also have a way to approach people who you did not know before.
We need to compete with those networking opportunities and keep in mind, that membership in a society costs money, right? But we also have much more to offer than simply giving you a list of names that might be interesting to you. We create real networking opportunities. At conferences, award ceremonies, in regional groups (Ortsverbände), with online offers such as ChemConnect and so on. It is important for us to make it clear to potential members that this exists and is really of great value.
In addition, it seems to me that people are more frequently rethinking their position in the world than they did before. This sounds very philosophical, but people rethink their own identity and where they belong to, and they see it more in the way of a return on investment. Should I be a member of a society becomes a question of: Do I identify with this group of people? Am I willing to spend money on it? And then every year they rethink this and re-evaluate their options. And because you have this constant balancing, people are also getting more anxious about whether they did the right thing or not. This creates a higher dynamic for us: More people become members, but also more people leave. We have a yearly turnover ranging between 5% and 10%. This number is much higher than I would like it to be.
On the other hand, we also have a lot of members who stay with us for a lifetime. They become members early on and stay at least until they retire and many of them even way beyond that.
Most GDCh members seem to come from academia. You are coming from industry, so is it a challenge keeping industry professionals engaged, especially those who transition into management and maybe question the relevance of their membership?
I am very much convinced that we also create value for industry, a significant value. The biggest difference, in some sense, is that the value we create for industry extends beyond the individual member level to the company level.
What do you mean by that?
If you look at awards or conferences, this is something that in academia is almost a given. I can hardly imagine a professor of chemistry not ever going to a conference, and it is very clear that when you apply for a job in academia or you want to advance in your career, an award makes a difference.
However, the value of professional networking in industry should not be underestimated. Chemists in companies, whether large or small, have a less obvious need to interact with peers outside their own company. Their primary role is not to generate and disseminate knowledge to the public but to work within company objectives. But I really believe that when chemists connect with each other in a pre-competitive way, it helps every single company, because you get insights into how people do things in their companies: Do they still see themselves as chemists? What common issues do they have in chemistry? Do we get enough new chemists from university? Do the schools and other institutions provide enough young talent? Without platforms that enable these discussions, such conversations would not happen.
We are one of the strongest platforms in Germany supporting this exchange. That is why I think that we create a lot of value for industry. In addition, let us not forget that the GDCh is structurally set up for industry representatives to shape the society itself: half of the board consists of people from industry or public institutions and the other half from academia.
Volunteering in a chemical society widens your horizon no matter if you are a chemist working in industry or academia
I have been recruiting people in industry, and it does distinguish you from other applicants whether you have done volunteer work or not. It is one of the things I wrote in one of my editorials for the Nachrichten aus der Chemie: volunteering is not a one-way street. Ideally, it is a win-win situation for both sides [1].
If I would like to volunteer, how can I find the right place and topic to engage in, especially if I am not an active member currently?
I really think this is something we need to work on. Many of the open volunteer positions are not visible to the outside. So typically, the way that volunteer positions are filled is that we know some terms are coming to an end and positions need to be filled at some point in time. So, we reach out to people close to that for recommendations. It could be the other people on the selection committee, it could be the board, it could be within the divisions. And then we try to identify members who might be interested in doing that.
I think we should go a step beyond that and think about advertising some of those positions. That might not be the best thing for every position, but I want to make it transparent to all that members can volunteer if they want to.
Something we want to achieve is that the members have the feeling that if they want to engage, they can without it being too difficult. One idea could be simply asking members on a regular basis if they would be willing to be volunteers in general and then we put them in a separate database and approach them if something suitable comes up.
The GDCh owns or co-owns many journals, including the flagship journal Angewandte Chemie. Publishing activities also connects you via Chemistry Europe with other societies. How important is that?
To start with our flagship journal, Angewandte Chemie: something that I am extremely proud of, is that this journal has developed in the last 30 years from a good journal into one of the leading journals worldwide. And with a title that is German, right? This is something I always liked when I did my postdoc in the US; it was nice to hear American people say “Angewandte Chemie”. I am really proud that together with only a few other journals, we basically shape the direction of where chemistry is going.
Chemistry Europe was founded to unite European chemists and societies through publishing. It started by merging national journals into joint European ones—creating what, in business terms, would be called a critical mass. I am a big believer that society-backed journals have a higher value than those that are not backed up by a society.
Why do you think so?
If an award is granted by experts in the field, it has a higher value because of the experts’ prestige. Similarly, a journal backed by scientific societies holds greater credibility, as societies ensure a level of scientific validity that non-society journals cannot always guarantee. With Chemistry Europe, we take this to the next level in the sense, that many societies have come together; 16 now.
Of course, the journals are all peer-reviewed. If you think about peer review as an example, it is the fundamental cornerstone of what makes scientific publishing valid. If somebody gets asked to do a peer review, and especially if they are a person who gets asked all the time, they must choose for which journal they do the peer review. And they will probably choose one that is of a higher significance.
And all of that makes these journals really valuable for the scientific community.
How is your interaction with other societies, for example, within Chemistry Europe?
I think it is really important that societies collaborate. While there is some level of competition, it differs from that in industry. Besides publications, we, for example, also collaborate on conferences and awards.
The existence of Chemistry Europe means that we meet more often than we otherwise would. So in very practical terms, it gives us a reason to meet and talk about many things—not just publishing.
Together, we are at the forefront of science. Scientific rigor and truth are fundamental values to which we are committed. I would guess all the societies have this as a number 1 of their vision statements.
As scientists, we are able to change our opinion when science tells us to do so—a principle that seems obvious to those within the field but is not necessarily recognized by the broader society. Given current global political trends, this commitment is increasingly under threat, and scientific societies serve as essential platforms to defend it. And I am glad that we do.
As societies, we play an important role in continuously advocating for science itself. We need to have a good education in high schools so that we can get more young talent and then hopefully more scientists who can create new science. Ultimately, scientific advancement benefits society as a whole, raising the standard of living—something everyone wants. But more broadly, good education in schools generates general scientific knowledge, trust in the scientific approach, and the ability to differentiate scientific facts from fakes.
How much of the experience you gained in your previous jobs will we see in the next GDCh activities and strategies?
Quite a lot. In my six years with Open Innovation, I learned a lot about how to interact with people outside your organization, which is rare in industry. Most people in industry work within their field, team, and possibly with vendors. I had the opportunity to work not just with people who are paid to do something, but to explore how we could jointly create value that neither of us could create alone, even when we did not have the same goals.
If you collaborate as a company with a university professor, which I did extensively in China, for example, their goal is not necessarily to invent a new drug and then bring it to market. Their goal in cooperating with a company is that it gives them the opportunity to put their research into actual use. This is one reason why I went into industry—I have always liked to see how the research that I worked on actually made an impact somewhere else.
Within the GDCh we talk about collaboration between societies and collaboration with volunteers. It is important to understand that their agendas are not the same as our agenda, right? There is a big overlap, of course, otherwise, they would not do it at all, but there are other agendas and reasons why they do things.
I learned that knowing what the other side actually wants is crucial for successful collaboration. And then to somehow formalize that. In many of our collaborations, the strictness is not quite as necessary as it is in industry. However, it does help a lot to at least think about where misunderstanding might occur.
So, simple example, you have a selection committee and you say, well, the people on this committee will act for three years and then can get reappointed one single time. This sounds like a clear rule. But when you look into the details all of a sudden you are asking: What does three years mean? Calendar years? What does reelection mean? Does it mean it just happens automatically or does it mean that one needs to be re-nominated? What happens if somebody gets sick for two years and then wants to continue? So, all of these things need to be clarified at some point in time.
It is a learning experience for me to understand how detailed we need to be, where detailed rules are necessary, and where they are not. Too much detail is suffocating and does not account for the need for flexibility and openness to innovation. But we need clear processes and attractive offerings to keep volunteer engagement appealing, while addressing the challenges it brings, such as finding a balance between professional, personal, and volunteer commitments.
And, in more general terms, I really believe in the power of collaboration. I have seen how much value can be created beyond things you can do yourself, things that otherwise would not be possible. And again, coming back to Chemistry Europe, none of these journals would exist if these 16 societies had not collaborated. So, there is great value in doing things in collaboration.
How do you spend your time outside of work?
My wife and I both like work, but we take our time outside of work too. Maybe like many parents, our previous hobbies have taken a back seat, and being with our children has become a big part of our day outside of work. We have breakfast together, most of the time we have dinner together, and we clean the kitchen together. Then my youngest daughter reads something, or I read something to her, so all of that makes a lot of my day. I always make sure to find time for it.
Thank you very much for the interview.
Tom Kinzel, born in 1977 in Erfurt, Germany, studied chemistry at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where he earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 2008. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA, focusing on palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions under the guidance of Professor Stephen L. Buchwald, he began his professional career in 2011 as a laboratory manager at Bayer Pharma, Wuppertal, Germany. He subsequently held various positions, including leading the Open Innovation Centers in China and Europe, focusing on alliances and collaborations with external partners. In 2022, he joined Nuvisan ICB, Berlin, Germany, a contract research organization for the pharmaceutical industry, heading the services department within the life science chemistry division. In 2023, Tom Kinzel completed an Executive MBA at HEC Paris, France.
Since August 2024, he has been the Executive Director of the German Chemical Society (GDCh), succeeding Professor Dr. Wolfram Koch.
Selected Publications by Tom Kinzel
- Thomas J. Maimone, Phillip J. Milner, Tom Kinzel, Yong Zhang, Michael K. Takase, Stephen L. Buchwald, Evidence for in Situ Catalyst Modification during the Pd-Catalyzed Conversion of Aryl Triflates to Aryl Fluorides, Journal of the American Chemical Society 2011, 133, 18106–18109. https://doi.org/10.1021/ja208461k
- Eun Jin Cho, Todd D. Senecal, Tom Kinzel, Yong Zhang, Donald A. Watson, Stephen L. Buchwald, The Palladium-Catalyzed Trifluoromethylation of Aryl Chlorides, Science 2010, 328, 1679–1681.
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1190524 - Tom Kinzel, Yong Zhang, Stephen L. Buchwald, A New Palladium Precatalyst Allows for the Fast Suzuki−Miyaura Coupling Reactions of Unstable Polyfluorophenyl and 2-Heteroaryl Boronic Acids, Journal of the American Chemical Society 2010, 132, 14073–14075. https://doi.org/10.1021/ja1073799
- Donald A. Watson, Mingjuan Su, Georgiy Teverovskiy, Yong Zhang, Jorge Garcia-Fortanet, Tom Kinzel, Stephen L. Buchwald, Formation of ArF from LPdAr(F): Catalytic Conversion of Aryl Triflates to Aryl Fluorides, Science 2009, 325, 1661–1664. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1178239
- Lutz F. Tietze, Tom Kinzel, C. Christian Brazel, The Domino Multicomponent Allylation Reaction for the Stereoselective Synthesis of Homoallylic Alcohols, Accounts of Chemical Research 2009, 42, 367–378. https://doi.org/10.1021/ar800170y
- Lutz F. Tietze, Tom Kinzel, Thomas Wolfram, Asymmetric Allylation of Methyl Ketones by Using Chiral Phenyl Carbinols, Chemistry – A European Journal 2009, 15, 6199–6210. https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.200900062
- Tom Kinzel, Felix Major, Christian Raith, Thomas Redert, Florian Stecker, Nina Tölle, Julia Zinngrebe, Organic Synthesis Workbook III, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, Germany, 2007. ISBN: 978-3-527-31665-6
Reference
[1] Tom Kinzel, Ehrenamt: mehr als nur ein Dankeschön, Nachr. Chem. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1002/nadc.20244145559
Also of Interest
The GDCh highlights the significance of volunteer work and aims to enhance volunteer experiences
Wolfram Koch, who led the GDCh for over 20 years and strengthened its partnership with Wiley-VCH and other chemical societies, reflects on this memorable time
