Manuela Ortmann from Buchendorf has become known for her work for the "Bone Marrow Donation Campaign Bavaria". Now she is a speaker. © Private
Manuela Ortmann was the face of the "Bone Marrow Donation Campaign Bavaria". Now she is a speaker - and wants to win a nationwide contest.
Buchendorf – It is well known that "Germany's next Topmodel" is looking for the prettiest girls in Germany. What is less well known is that such a competition also exists for speakers. His name: "Germany's next Speaker Star". Manuela Ortmann has applied for this with a two-minute video, for which you can vote until 18 June. "I'm happy for everyone who watches it and votes for me," she says. The five best of the 250 applicants will compete for the title at a live event on October 20 in Frankfurt's Jahrhunderthalle.
You can cast your vote until 18 June
Ortmann's speech has the clear message: "Take care of yourself first before you make a difference in the lives of others." In her opinion, this should be conveyed to people much more often. "This has nothing to do with selfishness at all," she says. Many people would only behave as they would like it to behave. She knows from her own painful experience that this does not make her happy.
The 56-year-old grew up in Biberach. She didn't experience much love as a child. She doesn't blame her parents for that. "They were from the war generation, they didn't know any better." But sentences like "First the work, then the pleasure" or "The donkey always calls himself first" she has internalized. She worked as a dental assistant, foreign language correspondent and in sales. She gave birth to two children. "But I've rarely felt anything like joie de vivre."
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Ortmann became known when she started working for the "Aktion Knochenmarkspende Bayern" (AKB). She coordinated the typing campaigns – with great success. "When I started, we had 100,000 donors, when I quit, there were 360,000," she says with pride. "I was the face of AKB." But then something happened that threw her off track: her own father contracted a particularly aggressive form of leukemia. "He couldn't be helped." At Christmas 2015, he shared the findings with his daughter. A few weeks before his death in October 2016, he told her a sentence that still haunts her today: "You have to start living your own life."
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What followed was a period of suffering. The Buchendorf native could not do her old job at the AKB for much longer. "Every case touched my heart too much. My skin was getting thinner and thinner." She was also not happy in another position in the foundation. The subsequent burnout was a terrible experience. "I was just an empty shell." At the same time, she thought about what her father wanted to tell her. What would it mean to live a life of your own? Didn't she?
In the meantime, Manuela Ortmann is doing better than ever. It gives the impression of a self-contained, balanced person. "I just let self-love into my life." She is currently building a new life for herself as a mentor for personal development, trainer for stress and burnout prevention as well as a speaker – i.e. motivational speaker for companies. Especially the so-called "mindsetting", i.e. working on a positive inner attitude, suits her. After all, she has already won the Diamond Award in Dubai. She would have no objection to the title "Germany's next Speaker Star".
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The video of Manuela Ortmann can be found here