Dr Tutschka is the first president to lead the professional association for German and Austrian lawyers, DAV Austria, and can draw on her many years of experience in the German and Austrian legal industry, her strong network, but above all her expertise in strategy, leadership and intercultural know-how.

DAV Austria was founded in Salzburg in 2020 as the 12th foreign association of the German Bar Association (DAV) with the purpose of promoting professional exchange between the German and Austrian legal profession for business, politics and further education. With approximately 62,000 members in 250 local lawyers' associations, the German Lawyers' Association has represented every third German-speaking professional for almost 150 years. The DAV's foreign associations have the important function of supporting the German-speaking professional network of the legal profession across national borders and mediating between national interests, and thus represent an important interface not only for the respective professional colleagues at home and abroad, but also for the German economy and the European internal market. Germany is Austria's most important economic partner; especially during the Covid_19 pandemic, but also already in the years of the so-called refugee crisis, there was an important common "need for regulation" in German-Austrian border traffic.

Dr. Geertje Tutschka, lawyer, Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and trainer in legal coaching has been heading the Coaching Award for HR Excellence for the use of coaching in talent development programmes in companies and organisations since 2017. With her Prism Award team, she coordinates, organises, supports and accompanies on the one hand potential applicants of the renowned award and on the other hand IT, event team, partners and sponsoring as well as last but not least the 10-member top-class expert jury for coaching from science, media, further education and HR.

Among the award winners in the past years were CMS TaxLegal, Volkswagen, Adidas, Vodafone and SAP with their coaching programs.

"Precisely because coaching is not a protected term, quality management, transparency and sustainability are of utmost relevance, especially for users. This is true at the C-level in large international companies as well as in low-threshold offers for career and life coaching but also in pro-bono coaching for a good cause. Coaching can make a significant contribution to many important issues of the future if the industry finally succeeds in drawing clear dividing lines between professional and effective coaching and offers that merely adorn themselves with the term "coaching" to appear modern. The Prism Award of ICF Germany can and should contribute to this distinction."

The ICF Germany, a Top 10 Charter Chapter of the world's largest professional association of professional coaches, honoured Dr. Tutschka for this in 2020 with the Team Recognition Award for special voluntary commitment to the coaching industry.

When Dr. Geertje Tutschka, PCC of the world's largest professional association for professional coaches with more than 40,000 members took over as president with a small board in 2016, it was one of 15 associations in Germany that had joined forces in the so-called Round Table Coaching (RTC). Three years later, ICF Germany was one of the top 10 chapters (out of about 150) with a membership growth of 100%, a large dedicated board team with numerous city chapters and project teams, the most successful Virtual Education for Coaches in Germany as well as the multi-day professional and public congress "Coachingtag".

With the HR Hand book "Quality Management in Coaching" (German/English) and the launch of the coaching award Prism Award, Dr. Tutschka as president and her board team have been instrumental in focusing outwardly consistently on the strengths of the association such as international quality standards and Ethical Guidelines for ICF Germany, thus moving away from people to content. Internally, in these almost four years, she and her team have on the one hand created solid growth structures and on the other hand completed a cultural change towards a virulent participatory association.

For these years in service, ICF Germany received the ICF Foundation's "Gift of Coaching" award for special voluntary commitment to social change in 2018 and the ICF's "Chapter Recognition Award" for 2019 for the association's special success in the German coaching market.