After a career spanning more than 21 years at Zeiss, Mr Joe Redner has departed the company, handing the reins of the Australasia business to Dr Rene Hessling.
Redner retired on 1 October as managing director of Zeiss Australia and New Zealand to pursue personal interests and to spend time as a volunteer on bush fire recovery and ecological projects.
With a background in surgical microscopy, Redner began his Zeiss career in 2000 as an ophthalmic microscope product manager based in Oberkochen, Germany.
He subsequently assumed responsibility for the global microscope business before relocating to Sydney to head up the ANZ medical technology business in 2002. From 2007 to 2015, he served as manager for the ANZ business before relocating to the US to become president of sales and service for Carl Zeiss Meditec, Inc.
In 2017, he was appointed the Asia Pacific head of sales for ophthalmic devices and took on his most recent role as managing director for Australasia in 2018.
“Together with his colleagues, Joe successfully advanced and developed our business wherever he worked. He is an example of how international experience can strengthen networks and collaboration,” Zeiss Group CEO and president Dr Karl Lamprecht said.
“We would like to thank Joe for his exceptional commitment and excellent work, and we wish him all the best for his future endeavours.”
Hessling, who been with the company for almost 20 years, has been based in Sydney since 2015 as division manager for Zeiss Research Microscopy Solutions and Industrial Quality Solutions for ANZ.
With a degree in neurobiology and systematic zoology from the University of Osnabrueck, Germany, he originally joined Zeiss Microscopy in 2002 as an application specialist for confocal microscopy, supporting northern Germany and Scandinavia.
From 2005, he managed the Training Application & Support Centre, a team that provides second-level sales support for the portfolio of microimaging technologies across EMEA.
From 2008 to the end of 2011, Hessling assumed the role of profit centre manager for Zeiss UK before returning to Germany in early 2012 to serve as manager for the German sales organisation, before his 2015 move to Sydney.
“In my previous role, I worked extensively with universities and research organisations in life science and material science across Australia and New Zealand. I’m very excited to now be engaging more broadly with the medical and vision care divisions of Zeiss and our customers within these markets,” Hessling said.
“I feel privileged to work with an extremely passionate team in Zeiss ANZ and to be part of a global organisation with a history of 175 years of providing cutting-edge optical technologies across different markets.”
Hessling said there were numerous new product launches across different business sectors on the horizon.
“The innovation rate at Zeiss has never been higher and our roadmap not only focuses on hardware developments but in particular on digital solutions and data management platforms to connect technologies across complete workflows,” he said.
“We currently have a very experienced team, which we will further expand, and I look forward to working with them to best support these new technologies across Australia and New Zealand.”
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