When experience meets fresh perspective, something more than knowledge transfer can happen – a genuine dialogue across generations. At the end of 2025, Bernard Van Der Schrick, Rely’s Engineering & Technology Manager with over four decades of industry expertise, welcomed Ismael Saez, then a final-year student at ULB’s Engineering School, for a two-month internship.
In a company like Rely, where expertise is built through years of projects, client interactions and problem-solving, passing knowledge from one generation to the next is part of what helps the business grow and innovate. But knowledge transfer is rarely a one-way process. While experienced professionals share lessons learned over the course of their careers, younger engineers bring new perspectives, fresh approaches and the latest academic insights.
For Bernard and Ismael, what could have remained a classic academic exercise quickly turned into a much richer journey. It is the story of an encounter, where learning became reciprocal and where a true peer relationship took shape.
Discover their perspectives in the following cross-interview, where Bernard and Ismael reflect on what they learned from each other, and what this experience reveals about collaboration, mentoring, and innovation.