Alexander Minder likes unusual combinations. At secondary school he was drawn to both science and music. He later earned a PhD in microbiology and then moved into finance, spending 24 years at Credit Suisse in a variety of different roles. Along the way he completed a Master's in Cultural Management, purely out of interest, because culture is an important part of the 57-year-old's life. For 30 years he has appeared as an extra on the stage of the Zurich Opera House. Alexander Minder has been involved with Tandem IMS for quite some time. The father of two grown-up daughters sat on the school's Advisory Board for 12 years. Two years ago he joined the school's operational management, and since August 2026 he has been School Director. In this interview, he talks about how this came about, how he can draw on his experience, and whose expertise he relies on in educational matters.
My work at Credit Suisse was very varied and I really enjoyed it. But I also knew I didn't want to retire there. I felt a growing wish to try something different. When UBS took over Credit Suisse in 2023, that was a clear sign for me: it was time for a change. I wanted to work in an environment where I could see the direct impact of what I do.
I've known Tandem IMS for many years. I was on the Advisory Board for around 12 years, where I was responsible for financial matters. While I was thinking about my next career step, I had a conversation with the school's founder, Sonya Maechler-Dent. She said to me: "It's time you came to join us."
Tandem IMS has grown considerably in the 22 years since it was founded. Today we have more than 300 students and over 100 staff. With the development of the Gymnasium, the organisation has become even more complex. In this phase of growth, the school needed someone with a broad foundation in strategy and business management.
We decided to strengthen the educational leads of the individual sections in a targeted way. They take on more responsibility for their areas, meaning the day-care centres, the kindergarten, the primary school and the Gymnasium. I take on the role of School Director, looking after operational and strategic management and, in a sense, holding everything together.
My responsibility lies with the overarching topics: human resources, finance, organisation and marketing. These are exactly the areas where I have expertise and a lot of experience. A central part of my role is to listen, pick up on issues, communicate transparently and represent our school strongly to the outside world.
Put simply: in everything related to the school's content and teaching. There I rely on our educational specialists. When it comes to the curriculum, timetabling, lesson design or didactics, they are the experts. When recruiting teachers, too, it's the educational leads who assess whether someone is the right person for the job. In our founder, we also have an experienced educator on the Board of Directors, who also heads the Gymnasium.
I see precisely this diversity as a great strength. Today more than ever, education is an interplay of pedagogy, social foresight and interdisciplinary thinking. Through my work in research, finance and the cultural sector, I have learned to lead organisations with care, to build bridges and to look at issues from very different perspectives. Tandem IMS has outstanding educational staff at every level, from day care to Gymnasium. My role as School Director is to safeguard this strong educational foundation, to give the team the space to do their work and to bring in experience from other fields. Deep educational expertise and broad leadership experience complement each other perfectly.
When it comes to the school's direction and concept, we are deliberately focusing on continuity. Thanks to my years on the Advisory Board, I have long known and valued the school's direction. I fully support our educational concept and look forward to continuing on this path together with the team.
One important element is enquiry-based learning, combined with the Swiss curriculum. Put simply, it works like this: rather than giving children all the information from the outset, we offer an engaging stimulus, a so-called "provocation". This might be an outing, an object or a book. After this initial stimulus, the children themselves consider what they want to find out more about. Take the topic of grass: one child might want to know why cows eat grass, another how a lawnmower works, and a third why grass is green. The teacher picks up on exactly these questions and guides the children as they research and present their answers. At the Gymnasium, we take this approach further with Design Thinking, where the focus is on finding creative solutions to real-world problems.
The multilingualism and the cultural diversity. When our daughters were three and five, we moved to London. They attended the German School there, but had a lot of contact with English through their hobbies and social lives. I saw how formative it is to grow up with several languages from an early age. With a language, you also absorb other cultures and develop an openness towards other people. That kind of attitude and experience continues to pay off later in life.
I've developed enormous respect for what teachers achieve every day. As a teacher, you can hardly afford to have a bad day, because the children notice it immediately. On top of that come parent meetings, internal coordination and lesson preparation. It's extremely demanding. Beyond that, I learn all sorts of new things every day from very different areas, which I find wonderful.
During my last year at the bank, I already knew I would be moving to Tandem IMS. So I completed a CAS at the PH Luzern for school leaders without a teaching background. At the same time, I started building a network in the education sector. It was important to me to prepare as well as possible for this new environment.
I'm interested in people: who they are, what they do and what drives them. That's why I want to be a School Director who listens, brings people together and encourages teams to develop their ideas together.
Tandem IMS has existed for 22 years. The school started out as a day nursery, and the kindergarten and primary school followed later. A year ago, we also launched the Gymnasium and SekA+. We want to continue along this path. Our goal is a school that a child can attend from the age of six months to 18 years, if families wish. We want to achieve this seamless progression between levels. On this long journey together, we want to be a reliable partner for parents, and we are grateful for their trust.
I'm here because I believe in this school's vision. We need to give children and young people creativity, curiosity and empathy. These are things that machines and AI cannot do, even if they sometimes imitate them. I believe these are exactly the skills that will be in demand in the future, both in existing professions and in creating new fields of work and new jobs.
With enquiry-based learning and Design Thinking, we are working in exactly this area. Children and young people learn to develop creative solutions to problems, to try things out and, at times, to work with their hands. It's about staying curious, acting with empathy, consciously helping to shape our environment and making progress together. That is what we want to foster.
(laughs) I was a curious student. I was pretty good in most subjects, as long as they had nothing to do with languages. I wasn't particularly hard-working, though. I left a lot of things until the last minute, and that still follows me a little today. I got on well with everyone in my class and was often involved in things: I tutored other students, played music and spent a lot of time on the football pitch. I had a lot of energy, and I still do.