Economic Forum April

Events. Schloss Neubeuern.

Economic Forum April

14.04.2026

Effervescent women power

At the end of what is now the third season of the Schloss Neubeuern Business Forum, Eurofighter pilot Nicola Winter was not the only one to set an impressive example of female leadership

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On 14 April 2026, Nicola Winter was a guest at Schloss Neubeuern. With her expertise as a Eurofighter pilot, ESA reservist and air rescuer, she inspired around two hundred listeners with her exciting experiences. The fully booked number of participants alone promised that this business forum would be a very entertaining and successful evening. With her professional background, Nicola Winter obviously aroused a particularly strong interest – especially among the female guests and students. Expressive and likeable, she gave many insights into her personal career and her unusual and multi-faceted career in aviation, which provided the audience with some astonishing insights. After all, it is not often that you get the opportunity to hear authentic information about fighter jets, pilot equipment and strategies in aviation. As a lecturer in crisis and emergency management, Nicola Winter’s presentation enabled the audience to derive the transferable meanings of her reports for themselves. To the press reports

Resilience can be learnt, empowerment requires trust, and good leadership starts with clarity.

Nicola Winter was a fighter pilot in the German Armed Forces for over a decade. She was one of only three women to fly the Eurofighter and trained pilots in the USA. After a selection process with more than 22,500 applications, she became a member of the astronaut reserve in 2022. Impressive technical expertise.
In combination with the very honest stories from her youth and her leadership experience, she achieved a high level of credibility and made her lecture in Neubeuern more than just a motivational talk. Against the background of the student presentations at the beginning of the event, she particularly emphasised the importance of teamwork, resilience and the free development of one’s own abilities. In her view, psychological security, autonomy and clear mutual expectations are the key prerequisites for this. Anyone who is afraid of being laughed at for their ideas or immediately sanctioned for mistakes will quickly silence themselves, she warned. Good team culture therefore starts on a small scale. Everyone needs to be heard and seen, even if not every idea is implemented in the end.

"With courage and passion, the path to the stars is open to us"

With this quote from Nicola Winter, Annalena Starzmann, a Year 10 student, introduced the four student teams, who then presented their current research work and business projects. The entrepreneurs from the region in attendance were once again deeply impressed by the professional presentations they heard from the budding new business generation. The successful research into a shelf-life film for poultry meat and the promising work on an app that sensibly allocates seats in the classroom have already earned the respective students top places in this year’s Bavarian “Jugend forscht” competition. The “Schlosslimo” project seminar impressed with delicious, tangy mango lemonade and a perfectly launched marketing concept. And the Year 7 entrepreneurship project promoted its wonderfully fragrant castle soaps. Both the castle lemonade and the castle soap were successfully sold at the stands afterwards.

Experiencing business live
Susanne Schörghuber, head of the boarding school, was very proud of the pupils who had worked so passionately on this twelfth business forum. She was particularly fond of the “effervescent female power”, which was once again brought to life on this evening at Neubeuern Castle. She was referring to the historically relevant women who made the founding of a school such as the boarding school Schloss Neubeuern possible a hundred years ago. To this day, the assertiveness of women in society is a major and noteworthy issue. She therefore expressed her special thanks to the expert Nicola Winter, whose important example set an impressive conclusion to this season of the Business Forum.
This was also the view of the sponsor partners present, who also expressed their pride to the students, who once again gave them the confidence that there is no more important investment than supporting successful educational concepts.

“I was particularly impressed at Schloss Neubeuern by the openness, seriousness and curiosity with which the pupils engaged with challenging topics. Skills such as resilience, a sense of responsibility, team spirit and the willingness to think clearly even in challenging situations are more important today than ever before – not just in aviation or aerospace, but in every form of leadership and personal development.
The Schloss Neubeuern Business Forum provides young people with valuable impulses for precisely this. The direct exchange with experienced personalities from different disciplines makes it clear how to deal constructively with pressure, uncertainty and change. The fact that a school gives its pupils this access so early on is something special – and a strong foundation for their future path.”Nicola Winter, pilot, lecturer in crisis and emergency management & bestselling author