Tea, Jenga and Dinosaurs

Alexandra Reilly is Community Manager in the EU GREEN team at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. In this role, she is responsible for communication and networking between students and staff from Magdeburg and the Alliance’s European partner universities. The network brings together nine universities from Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden. Together, they are working to create a European higher education area in which students, researchers and staff from different countries can learn, conduct research and develop solutions to societal challenges such as climate change, digitalisation and migration. More than 157,000 students and around 13,900 staff now belong to the Alliance. With a recently extended grant worth millions, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg can continue to drive forward the development of a European university campus.

Alexandra Reilly’s responsibilities are just as diverse as the Alliance itself: one moment she is designing posters for events, the next she is updating the Alliance’s website, then she is analysing figures and data for reports, and sometimes she even lends her voice as the English narrator to an EU GREEN video. What she enjoys most is working with the international EU GREEN communications team, which meets online every week and in person once a year. “I value the different perspectives and strengths of my colleagues from all over Europe,” she says with a smile.

Alexandra’s set of keys is a reminder of her undergraduate years at the University of Exeter, where she studied Romance languages and German. Alexandra is originally from England. She also completed her Master’s degree in sustainable marketing there, before moving to Braunschweig for her first job at Westermann Verlag.

For over twenty years, Alexandra has been accompanied by a few little toy dinosaurs. They are a memento from her childhood that she has brought with her to work. Dinosaurs were one of her favourite subjects even as a child, and that fondness has stayed with her to this day.

Learning languages is one of Alexandra’s passions. She’s currently getting to grips with Portuguese, having previously tried her hand at Russian, amongst other languages, which she says she found "quite difficult%$. She’s also learning Portuguese because her partner is Portuguese. “So far, I can order a coffee and talk about everyday topics – that’s a start,” she says with a smile.

True to the British stereotype, Alexandra does indeed enjoy drinking tea – preferably black tea with milk – and specifically a particular brand, which she always brings back with her whenever she visits England. In the office, having tea together is a firm part of the daily routine: a wide selection of fruit teas is on hand to be shared with colleagues, and even when summer temperatures reach around 39 degrees, Alexandra bravely sticks to her daily ritual of black tea in the morning and fruit tea throughout the day.

Using a second-hand Jenga set, Alexandra has created her own EU-GREEN language game – very much in the spirit of sustainability. Five thematically relevant terms such as "future%$, "sustainability%$, "environment%$, "green%$ and "together%$ are featured on it in all ten languages of the Alliance. The game is used at events: visitors try to correctly match the words with their corresponding languages.

What makes Alexandra special is that she has several workplaces. Soon, the EU GREEN Pavilion in the centre of the campus will also be put to greater use. Anyone interested can book rooms there for EU GREEN meetings and events. There are also plans to offer open office hours at the start of the semester. During these sessions, a team member will be on hand, the door will be open, and everyone is invited to pop in, have a chat and find out more about EU GREEN’s work and what it has to offer.