About

I was born in a small town in the Netherlands, grew up as number 4 of a family of five, daughter of a medical doctor (mom) and a business lawyer (dad). In 1970, I entered the University of Leiden to study psychology. At that time I wanted to learn to become a play therapist, a new approach pioneered by Virginia Axline in the 1960s based on Rogerian principles, which I had seen the mother of one of my schoolmates practice while I was in elementary school. 

Still aiming to be a children’s therapist, I graduated with a degree in Developmental Psychology, more specifically using the structural family (or systems) therapy approach pioneered by Salvador Minuchkin. That was the beginning of a circuitous route to my organizational practice and my fascination with dynamics in systems, which function similarly whether in families or organizations.

I traveled through most of Europe in my 20s, and then ventured further into the Middle East and Asia. I lived in Geneva (1975), spent a couple of weeks in North Yemen, and a couple of years in Lebanon (1976–1978).

By 1979, I was working as an Associate Expert in Population Education at UNESCO’s Regional Office for Africa in Dakar. I was a member of a team responsible for implementing a UNFPA-funded program to educate young people about how to raise healthy families. One aspect of that was the promotion of ‘birth spacing’ - helping couples to space their pregnancies in a way that was good for the health of the women, their newborns and their older children. This led me into the world of family planning programs. 

My husband and I moved to New York City. There I found work for the Association of Voluntary Surgical Contraception (previously called AVS and later called EngenderHealth). Eight months later, we moved to Massachusetts where my husband joined Abt Associates and I was hired as a consultant to conduct research and write reports and papers on family planning for the Pathfinder Fund (now Pathfinder International) while raising our two daughters. 

In 1986, I joined a US government funded global health project led by Management Sciences for Health (MSH). This project would be rebid and re-won by MSH for the next 30 years. It is during this long run of projects that I discovered my true calling. I learned everything I could get my hands on about organizational behavior, development and culture. MSH offered me countless opportunities to put it practice what I was learning, creating more learning as I accumulated experience all over the world. Eventually, over a period of some 30+ years I trained, coached, designed and facilitated events, reaching thousands of health managers on how to strengthen their management, leadership and governance skills. 

On June 15, 2018, after 31 years, I said farewell to MSH and embarked on my own to practice what I most care about: helping people to have productive conversations with the people that matter, including themselves.

From 2018 till the present I have focused on coaching of individuals and working with NGO teams in various parts of the world. I continue to participate in courses to hone my skills and contribute to EthicalCoach’s pro bono coaching program for NGO leaders in Africa. My current focus is Team coaching and for that reason I'm following a course organized by the Global Team Coaching Institute.