Claudia Koerbler: A global citizen on a mission to end poverty

Claudia Koerbler is a Austrian born global citizen who has been living in three different countries over the last 13 years and now calls Washington D.C. her home.

Growing up in Austria

Koerbler is from a small Austrian village southeast of Vienna with around 2,000 inhabitants. “I grew up on top of the Mountain,” she says and compares her childhood scenery to that of The Sound Music. She comes from a non-academic family where her mom stayed home, and her father worked for the bank.

Traveling and language interpretation

At the age of 17, she informed her parents that she wanted to learn English and go to South Africa. But if you’re under 18, you need your parent’s approval – which she didn’t have. So she waited until after graduating high school, then took on a job for six months spinning towels and putting them in boxes so she could travel to San Francisco.

Once in the states, she ended up working for an opare company and also took English learning classes at Berkeley. She eventually ventured back to Austria in order to pursue simultaneous interpretation in English, Spanish, and German.

Towards the end of her studies, the Austrian Embassy invited her to do an internship in Washington D.C. Afterward, she worked for the Austrian embassy as a diplomat, the World Bank, and the United Nations.

Fighting poverty

Her passion is to help people in poverty. She states “Poverty is everywhere. Seven hundred ninety-five million people globally suffer from poverty.” She explains that there are many places where people make less than $1.90 a day.

Koerbler felt a duty to take action; she ended up going to Kenya to shoot a documentary, which translates to “I am Grateful “ from Swahili to English. She talked to locals living in the slums: youth and women with HIV positive children among them. She explains that she didn’t want to just talk about poverty; she wanted to experience it.

Goals of the documentary

The primary goal of the film is for people to find ways to take action and spread awareness.The documentary is screening in Austria, Nairobi, and in the US.

Simple advice that can benefit us all

We’ll end with Koerbler’s biggest piece of advice that she told me at the end of our conversation. These were words she had heard from a Kenyan friend: “Life is there to be loved, lived, and enjoyed.” Simple words we should all take note of.

About Claudia Koerbler

Claudia is an international development specialist, Austrian born global citizen, documentary film maker, global storyteller and host of Global Storytelling for Global Development, a platform with the goal to uses storytelling as a tool to create and foster social impact Globally. She is actively helping millennials become a part of a Zero Hunger generation by 2030.

She is an Austrian-born global citizen and trained Interpreter in German, English, and Spanish. Claudia is also the Co-Founder of Vehicles of Change, a show which explores the journey and motivation of local and global change makers to affect change. The TEDx speaker and storyteller talks in her speaking engagements on measures to eradicate extreme poverty, drive social impact forward and discuss her experience working in international development for the United Nations, Embassy of Austria and becoming an Intrapreneur in the World Bank Group. Her passion for finding global solutions to emerging problems and creating social impact brought her to Kenya where she filmed the documentary “Nashukuru- Storytelling in the faces of poverty”. Claudia currently works as Knowledge Management Specialist for the International Finance Cooperation of the World Bank Group. Claudia is a recipient of the Leadership Africa Summit Award.