How you collaborate makes a difference.

I support organisations, teams and communities to address challenges, develop key skills and build a participatory culture.

Tailored to your needs, I offer:

  • Facilitation: enjoy a meaningful event that strengthens clarity, innovation, trust and collaboration.
  • Training: learn how to boost participation, and develop skills for conscious collaboration.


Facilitation

Curious to experience a meeting, team-building day, event or multi-day gathering that invites everyone to contribute to what truly matters?

Coming together can profoundly shape what happens next. I’m passionate about creating meaningful experiences, combining internationally proven methods with a sharp focus on your unique needs and circumstances.

With your next meeting in mind, is any of these issues alive for you? 

  • Create clarity and alignment: uncover what you could be doing together, and how you want to work together.
  • Improve, innovate, brainstorm: explore untapped innovation potential in the organisation, or identify how you can improve day-to-day collaboration. Invite everyone to think along, learn from each other, and figure out the next steps. 
  • Build trust relationships: deepen bonds with colleagues or connect with new collaborators. 
  • Address challenges or opportunities: resolve conflict or make progress on a burning topic. 
  • Shape a participatory work culture: invite people to express ideas and to take leadership.  

Training

While we work with your specific challenges, you develop your skills or learn new practical approaches for more effective collaboration.

Together with you, I create a training, development programme or workshop that fits your needs and helps your team to learn and develop.

What are you struggling with?  

  • Trust and mutual support: how to proactively build the connection and trust to do your best work together? How to support each other in the challenges you face?
  • Participatory meetings: how to design and run meetings in a way that creates a more participatory culture? How to make effective decisions together?
  • Shared language for collaboration: how to communicate about tensions you experience? What are concepts and approaches that help you build shared understanding of the work you’re doing?
  • Inner skills: what are practical tools for inner development, that help you to work well together?
  • Conscious collectives: how to grow collectives where everyone is enabled to act entrepreneurially? How to thrive in a culture that is highly participatory?

I had the honour of working for organisations like:


Curious what others say?

“You greatly contributed to the success of this meeting – we got lots of thanks and positive feedback. I believe we achieved our main goals, which were to get people motivated, inspired and wanting to commit, as well as create ideas that may translate into concrete actions during the project.”

– Blandine Smilansky, Partnerships Coordinator, House of European History

“During the Enspiral Winter Gathering 2022, it became clear that An is not only a connoisseur of the hosting toolkit, but also a master of subtlety. With her invitations, presence and body language, she made calm moments calmer, deep conversations deeper and nurtured spaces where participants could easily open up about difficult topics.”

– Joriam Philipe, community builder

“An coordinates and facilitates with a good dose of humour, warmth and craftsmanship. Her strength lies in building relationships, and she knows how to leverage them to streamline the process well. Her flexibility and professionalism make her a pleasant facilitator. Thanks, An!”

– Mees Schouwenaar, project leader School Leaders for the Future (Schoolleiders voor de Toekomst)

Unique about me? Cross-pollination. 

Once I was an engineer who focused on material outcomes. Nowadays I’m still engineering, but my attention shifted towards how people create outcomes together.

Work with me if you’re interested in the: 

  • gentle guidance of a facilitator,
  • wide-angle view of a systems thinker,
  • crystal clarity of a scientist,
  • team spirit of a community member,
  • structured approach of an engineer,
  • openness to vulnerability of an authentic human being,
  • all of that enlivened with a bit of humour.


Strength and inspiration? These are my resources.

I combine proven methodologies, bright ideas and practices that work. I draw inspiration from a range of approaches and methodologies, including:

  • Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter (also known as Art of Participatory Leadership),
  • Sociocracy 3.0,
  • Theory U,
  • Internal Family Systems,
  • Liberating Structures,
  • Inner Development Goals,
  • and more.

I am a member of Enspiral and an ‘explorer’ at Greaterthan, both collectives working at the frontiers of collaboration and organisation building. I’m also connected to several communities of practice, and I enjoy constant learning. In my blog, I write about topics such as decentralised organising, participatory leadership, conscious collaboration, inner development and global burn-out. Some articles are in English, de meeste blogartikels zijn in het Nederlands.





And what about you?

I’d love to get to know you, and find out if we can collaborate. Share your details in this form, or find mine here. Happy to meet soon!



Receive updates

Hear from me when I have something exciting or inspiring to share.

“So, what I see in life-affirming leaders is that they are willing to say to people “I do not know the answer, but together we will figure it out.” . . . So these kinds of leaders . . . help gather us together so that together we can discover the answers.”

– Margaret Wheatley (author and management consultant)