A Member's Story...Hans Carlborg
Posted on Jul 26, 2016
It was much travelled and multilingual new member Hans Carlborg who told of his work experiences and long term passions, for golf, snow skiing, and Rotary in his "Behind the Member" address. That old cliche is still correct..our home grown speakers have wonderful and interesting tales to tell.
Hans Carlborg was educated in Stockholm, England and the USA with engineering specialization. This was interrupted by the obligatory national service in Sweden. A first job with the “Concord” project convinced him that he was less of a narrow specialist but more of a broader problem solver/teacher and so when time permitted away from his very serious golf and skiing pursuits (he reached representational status) he joined IBM.
There upon for some years he enjoyed the life of roving expatriate with that company with postings in many European cities, and for the record Budapest was his favorite.
At the time 1970+ the Cold War was at its peak, still notwithstanding that, Hans worked in the East (Moscow and East Berlin) for IBM on the implementation in those countries of its various management systems and teaching/consulting roles associated with them. He commented that doubtless his presence was monitored carefully in those places and he consciously, openly, maintained a strict professional approach to life and work while there. He was a regular traveller across “Check Point Charlie” and showed us fascinating images of that from the 1970’s.
With IBM still, (he remained with them for 30 years) Hans came to Sydney in the late 70’s and using that as a base and travelled extensively around Asia providing the consulting and teaching services to clients and overseas IBM offices.
In Australia a more subdued settled time prevailed with family and classical musical pursuits. That years back he had travelled to Poland and took a special trip to see Chopin's home was perhaps a precursor to his later classical musical interests, reportedly regularly singing “Messiah” in the Sydney Opera House.
Never one to stay too long in the one place, more recently Hans left IBM and established an antique business (with his wife) and lived for a time in France in a city renowned for its heritage qualities (and perhaps antiques).
All this time Rotary has been part of his life. He has belonged to 5 clubs and rattled off a series of significant projects (generally very local community oriented) in which he had been heavily involved with or driven. Now with Hawthorn Rotary work with Boroondara communities is foremost in his mind.
Older and less mobile by design, Hans is remarried and now settled in Melbourne with family connections. He offers the prospect of long term HRC membership and with energy and drive to get involved with “big’ community projects.
Welcome Hans!