I’m an independent communications consultant in Zurich. I work with internationally-facing Swiss professional-services firms on the positioning, messaging and content that decide whether the right clients and hires choose them.
Hi, I’m Timo Eugster.
A communicator's eye with a translator's discipline
I started my career as a translator working from Finnish and Italian into my native English, also translating French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. What drew me to translation was the same thing that eventually drew me into communications: a fascination with how the words we choose shape the world around us.
Being faithful to a source text is very much like being faithful to a brand voice. Both depend on listening hard, then making careful decisions about consistency, tone, and intent.
That transition happened at FIFA, where I moved from translation and editorial work into multilingual publication management and, eventually, into corporate communications at a more strategic level – trusted with shaping the organisation's voice.
Later, at Hitachi Zosen Inova and Julius Baer, I worked with senior leaders to communicate in a way that stayed on brand without ever sounding generic. Helping them sound like themselves, in other words.
Where I excel
What I do best is understand people and then capture their voice on the page. I'm an observer by nature – I listen carefully, ask the right questions, and pay attention to the details of how someone actually expresses themselves before I write a word on their behalf.
Colleagues tend to mention the same things about me: a calm temperament, dry sense of humour, precision with language, and a willingness to lead by example, doing the hard work myself. I can summarise a complicated idea to its core, and I enjoy working embedded with a team.
Building a practice
I've launched an independent communications practice, bringing senior in-house judgement to firms that need it but cannot yet justify hiring it. The inspiration for this was an xMBA in AI business skills and applied technologies, which changed how I work – not my writing style, but the effectiveness I can achieve through AI-supported workflows. And because I work as part of your team rather than through an agency, I already hold the context – so a change is a quick conversation, not a fresh brief to someone starting from scratch.
Beyond work
Despite my Urschwiizer name, I was born and raised in the UK – culturally, I'm British. And I also did my Finnish national service at the age of 18.
As a Swiss national by birth, speaking decent German, and having a six-year-old son in the local school system (he's the true Schwiizer in the family), I'm well and truly settled into Zurich life.