Jaroslav Blaha

Escaped in June 1970 to Germany. I spent an almost wonderful youth in Lindau/Bodensee in southern Bavaria. Very nice old town with approx. 25.000 inhabitants, which is crowded with tourists in summer and dead in winter.

On 04. July 1983 I started my limited career as a soldier in the famous German Air Force. The first steps were Officers Academy (including sea and land survival training with 3rd degree frost-bite) and 3+ years of fun at the Munich University.

Real life started in 1988 when I became Chief Instructor at the German AirForce Technical Academy in Augsburg. The job was to build up the training facilities for application software, networking, ADP-security and some programming.

After 3+ years I became bored and in June 1991 was moved out of the country to the NATO Headquarters AFCENT in Brunssum/The Netherlands. Suddenly I was project manager for multi-national ADP projects comprising everything between mobile command and control centers, interoperability, video-teleconferencing and office-automation LANs. The working environment was the worst in my life! It was funny to have (mostly) life pigeons in the office, although the broken windscreens were a bit unpleasant in winter time.

On 30 June 1995 my contract with the military expired and I was a free man. - Until I signed a contract as a civilian employee with NATO. This brought me a job at the NATO Programming Centre in Belgium and a lot of fun with the development of a new and modern realtime air-defence system.

The fun quickly faded in summer 1997 and it was time to look for a new perspective. So back to project management and engineering in NATO´s most interesting and extensive project ACCS LOC1. When the smog was low I could even see the Brussels Atomium from our office building.

11 years and 29 days in NATO was enough! Before I got my own stock number allocated, I have decided to resign and start a new career in industry by joining a small consulting company as Managing Partner and Chief Technology Officer.

... and as a side-effect I have spent ca. two years living in Versailles. It could have been worse.

Four successful years and many experiences later I decided to pursue business on my own: Blaha Executive Consulting GmbH was founded. Wish me luck!

In order to avoid the worst boredom there is now a second company, co-founded by me and focussing on outsourcing operations to Vietnam: Xenadi GmbH.