Claudia Wagner’s career story is the stuff of dreams. The striking 19-year-old German blond was just standing in a McDonald’s near her town of Wetter when a photographer spotted her and put her in contact with The Elite Modeling Agency in Hamburg. She was immediately selected to meet John Casablancas, the founder of Elite, and sent to Paris as it was clear she had international potential. Though this sounded like an absolute dream come true for so many young women, it was a departure from her original plan to become a doctor. “I gave myself a year [to make it in modeling.] If I just barely made a living at it, I’d go back to study. But if my career took off and it gave me the opportunity to travel and see the world, I would stick with it” she says.

Well, she definitely exceeded just making a living at modeling as the work steadily flowed in and would for the next 20 years. She ended up staying in France for 7 years and then relocated to New York where she has been ever since. Though she says her career evolved from more high fashion, editorial work to catalogues and department store campaigns, the work has always been constant. “My biggest success it that I had such a long career. A 20 year career in modeling is pretty unusual. Mine was very steady and at a very good level.” she says. Claudia has graced the cover of Marie Claire and has fronted campaigns for L’Oreal, Armani and Chanel Cosmetics. And never giving up her dream of education, she is now pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology as she enters a new, exciting phase of her career as well as motherhood for the first time.

And if that wasn’t enough, she and Diana realized that time had come to turn an idea that they had been talking about for years business and started UBOOKER.