About

Who is

Sandra Cegla

In my life, especially in my professional career, I have often gone through transformation processes. On the one hand, this has not always been easy, but it has always given me the freedom to fully come into my potentials, to live out my passions and at the same time to give gifts to the world with my profession. Here I would like to share with you who I was and who I am today.
Sandra Cegla
0 Years
Criminal Investigator
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SOS-Stalking
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Keynote-Speaker
In the early 2000s, I graduated from the Berlin Criminal Investigation Department and then moved into criminal investigations. In addition to many different offences I encountered as a young investigator, looking back I can say that I mainly investigated serious violence – stabbings, shootings, murder & manslaughter. Here, as a young, emphatic woman, I was confronted with unimaginable brute force, agony and the will to destroy. At that time, my imagination was not yet sufficient for this. Since I was in the field of domestic violence for many years, the victims in my cases were predominantly female and the perpetrators male. I saw legendary injuries, mutilations up to and including murder and manslaughter, and investigated in great detail how it had come about. In most cases, “my” victims had survived, so that in addition to the evidence, I was able to learn from them many details about the cruel acts of violence and the motives of the perpetrators, who would have taken the dead to their graves.

" Courage is the key to freedom."

On the one hand, this gave me deep insights into individual fates, dynamics of violence within families, but also social contexts, which would not have been possible for me in this form in any other profession. At the same time, I felt deep inside myself early on that I would probably not grow old in this profession – because with all the disinhibited and cruel violence against women, I would find it difficult to stay healthy for decades and to maintain my positive image of men and of humanity. With this early call of my intuition, my further path in life subsequently developed – after about 10 years of investigating as a detective superintendent, I felt that I had outgrown my profession. I wanted to be able to do more for those affected by violence and stalking and to be able to move in freer structures. The first ideas for my security agency SOS-Stalking were born. After 4 more years of learning new things, conceptualising, networking and inner growth, the time had finally come: after 14 years in the criminal police, I resigned my civil servant status for life and founded my security agency SOS-Stalking.
Wow, what a magical time in my life – I finally experienced an unimagined freedom to develop in my work in a whole new way and at the same time be able to make a real difference in the lives of those affected. From now on, I protected women who were acutely affected by stalking from their persecutors. I did this together with a team of experts from different professions as well as operational staff who were able to grab hold when it mattered. In Germany, Switzerland and Austria, we were able to protect the victims from their stalkers through strategic counselling based on criminal psychology as well as through operational missions. The fact that none of our victims was seriously violated over a period of 8 years from the time of our counselling is proof for me that we were really able to protect the women with our concepts. If you know in this context that almost every day in Germany an (ex)husband tries to kill his wife and even succeeds every third day – in relationship crimes we simply always have to assume stalking after separations, even if this is not yet statistically proven – then I draw the conclusion that we really have saved human lives in the last few years. That makes me proud and at the same time humble before life, because everything I was able to do for the women was supported by a committed team that was ready for action far beyond the normal level. At the same time, as a young criminal investigator, I received an incredible amount of encouragement and support from my former bosses in my commissariat, who allowed me to specialise according to my passion. I am still very grateful for that. After 7 years of SOS stalking, the next transformation process has announced itself in me. I discovered the desire to travel, made our advisory services for my travels predominantly digital and increasingly asked myself the question: What do I actually want to move in the world? And what is actually important to me today in the face of such different cultures that I was allowed to get to know? During this inventory of my life, it struck me that I had now dedicated more than 20 years of my professional life to fighting crime – so I have been fighting darkness for an incredibly long time. What if I simply lit a light now?
This thought worked so strongly in me that I was able to focus my attention on another aspect of my life: my business coaching. In the press I had long since become an important interview partner on the topic of stalking. I kept getting interview requests for major murder cases in the current daily press, live broadcasts or reports, and I was called Germany’s leading stalking expert. Besides the fact that I was perceived as an expert for my content, over the years I was approached again and again by women who were interested in my career path as a whole, even beyond being a former criminal police officer. They wanted to learn from me. In addition to my work as a stalking counsellor, I had also developed from a civil servant to an entrepreneur. How had I made the leap from civil servant to entrepreneur? How had I managed to become visible in public as an expert and thus offer my services beyond the borders of Germany? How had I managed to create stable income streams that made self-employment meaningful to me as opposed to my civil servant status? I realised that in addition to my competence in content, I had also become a role model for women who had career questions for me.

That’s why today I am just that: your career coach, speaker and author. With my ideas, I want to inspire you and make a real difference in your life.

Sandra Cegla -
My career at a glance

2015 - today

Business Coach für Frauen - Vocation and Leadership

2015 – 2016: one-year training as a personal coach, Hertzfeld Academy in Potsdam, followed by business coaching for women.
What the training taught me: The basics of coaching, differentiation from psychotherapy & counselling, ethics & morals in coaching, different methods.
What the women from my business coaching sessions have taught me: Vocation & professional fulfilment always start with ourselves and then continue to the outside. My own method “The DNA of Your Personality” has emerged.

2014 - today

Keynote speaker, Trainer

Nine years of impulses and talks at congresses, in talk rounds, workshops and seminars, e.g. Privacy Week Chaos Computer Club, women’s gatherings, professional events
What I learned from speaking in public: Presenting my content, using my own appearance and impact for my content, finding my own style and moving naturally on stage.

2001-2015

Detective Superintendent with the Berlin Police Department
(graduate in administration)

2001 – 2015: 14 years of criminal investigations in violent and attempted homicides, leading operations, victim protection and intervening in dangerous situations
What the criminal police taught me: The abysses of being human, to never close my eyes to realities and crimes, my own self-efficacy & strength, my assertiveness, the use of power & dominance in the right place, to acknowledge my masculine parts and live them out in a healthy way, the application of German laws in legal practice, to understand the German legal system with regard to the imprint of our German society, the advantages and disadvantages of hierarchical systems, to accept my own protective instincts as something natural & beautiful and no longer disfigure them as “helper syndrome”, to recognise my sense of justice as an important part of my personality.

2015 - 2023

Owner of the security agency SOS-Stalking

Eight years of active stalking intervention for women.
What building and leading my agency has taught me: I experienced leadership on a new level with new demands on me & in the process found more and more my own style. I was allowed to go into transformation from civil servant to entrepreneur. At the same time, I received attention as a stalking expert in Germany’s public sphere. I was allowed to learn press work, camera presence, appearing in live broadcasts and how to deal with the media with confidence.

2011-2018

Politician

2011 – 2018 active political engagement for the Berlin CDU,Federal Chairwoman of the Deutsche Staatsbürgerinnen-Verband e. V.
2015 – today: eight years of non-party, women’s political commitment with Germany’s oldest women’s association
2016 – 2018 deputy parliamentary group leader in the Berlin-Mitte district assembly (BVV Mitte), focus: Women, economy, youth welfare / District Chairwoman of the Frauen Union Berlin Mitte, Deputy Chairwoman of the Lesbian and Gay Union Berlin
What politics has taught me: To unite many interests, to use communication as an instrument of bringing people together, insights into political and social contexts, the formation of stable networks.