Why work with me
What I bring.
You are not choosing a method. You are choosing who is sitting across from you at the moment you say something you have never said out loud.
What I bring is presence and perception. That sounds like an attitude. It is an instrument. Below is what it means — as a person, as a coach, and as a space.
As a person
Attention came before language.
I learned young to read a room before anything had been said. The tone in a voice before the words arrived; the tension that lasted a fraction too long. Born between Curaçao and the Netherlands, attention became my way of orienting myself — not by knowing more, but by feeling sooner.
Twenty-five years later, after building and selling a company, my body drew the conclusion I would not draw myself. What I bring from that is not the story, but what it taught me: that forcing does not help, and that the routes you are used to — analysing, planning, pushing through — are precisely the routes that close.
That does not make me a better coach. It does make me someone who recognises it before it is named.
As a coach
Presence is what I bring. Perception is what I do with it.
I work without management models and without a handbook. Not because they are worthless, but because the question rarely sits where the model looks for it.
I listen to what is not said, and to what the body is making known in the meantime. I do not judge what you bring, and I hold nothing in place. For someone used to pulling the cart, that is often the difference: nothing here needs to be kept upright.
What I do not do: advise you on your organisation, hand you a model, or talk you towards something.
- School voor Zijnsoriëntatie
- Three-year programme
- Transformational Presence
- Certified with Alan Seale
- Polyvagal-informed
- Foundations with Deb Dana
- Psychodynamic coaching
- Unconscious patterns in leadership
- End-of-life companion
- Presence where every role falls away
- Contemplative practice
- Tibetan Buddhism · Nepal, India, France
- NOBCO
- Member number 90230
- Before this
- Randstad, Manpower, Adecco · entrepreneur 2008–2021
Multidisciplinary and free of dogma. The methods are not in the foreground; they become visible through what happens in a session.
As a space
Two kinds of space, and the second is the more important one.
The first is literal. The practice is on the Oorsprongpark in Utrecht, a quiet park just outside the centre. Quiet enough to hear what is going on — and in this work that is not a side matter.
The second one arises. At an adviser’s table, what you say is weighed. Not here. No one has a stake, nothing has to come of it, and nothing is reported back — not even when an organisation pays.
Whoever carries influence has few places where that is not required.This is one.
The book
In The Sense and Nonsense of Being I brought together what I have learned about perception and presence. It runs along the six senses and three basic movements. Not a method — a way of looking that you can use or set aside.
Introductory call
A conversation without an agenda.
Thirty minutes, free of charge, online. Not to decide anything, but to explore what is going on and whether this way of working fits. If something else would suit you better, I will say so.
The workbook that accompanies the book is a place to begin. Thirty exercises, no commitment.