On being human at work.
On being human at work.
I’m Annemieke – coach, facilitator and learning designer. Mum of Bram. Curious by nature, present by practice.
For more than 20 years I’ve worked at the intersection of HR, learning and organisational design, with people and teams who are building something that matters to them.
After studying Human Resource Development and working in traditional HR roles, I was introduced to Sociocracy and the possibilities of shared governance.
Curiosity led me further: into self-management, Holacracy, and new ways of organising. How people create meaningful, healthy work-lives where their creative intelligence can thrive.
In 2011 I began working independently, partnering with organisations exploring these new paradigms. My focus: helping people navigate complexity and shaping People & Culture practices that truly fit.
Over the years I’ve co-organised Startup Weekend Groningen and UX Impact, spoken at events on the future of HR, and now serve as coach, consultant and founder of Big Hearted — as well as on the Advisory Board of the PASMO Project.
Along the way: motherhood, health challenges, and a gradual shift from mind-led striving to body wisdom and presence.
What guides my work
- Open heart, strong back
- Equal, not the same
- Clarity is kind
- Feedback is essential
- Slowing down is strategic
- Make choices you can sleep with at night
- Practice over perfection
- The body knows before the mind understands
- Nature knows best
- There is healing in community
I’ve learned how embodied presence grounds everything, including leadership. How safety enables creativity. How shared power supports collective intelligence. How transitions are best guided with intention and community.
Much of what I do is ultimately rooted in matriarchal values; not as a reversal of power, but as a dismantling of the pyramid entirely. Circles instead of hierarchies. Care as a collective function, not a gendered burden. Children, earth and future life at the centre of how we organise ourselves.
This shapes how I work with organisations: building structures where power is shared, where voices matter, where collective sensemaking is a practice and the most vulnerable are not dismissed, but seen and cared for. Leadership that connects rather than controls. Culture that sustains rather than depletes.
Most of us have grown up inside systems that work the other way. Changing that doesn’t happen through more training or information. It happens through experience, and by choices of people like you and me. Remembering and sensing what we already know. My work creates the conditions for that shift: experiences that move something real, and leave you standing differently in your leadership, your relationships, your organisation.
So, I work with what can feel vulnerable or complex: leadership, power dynamics, wellbeing, fairness and systemic change.
At the heart of it all is a simple trust – in the intelligence that lives in every person and every system.
What Others Say
Annemieke conceptualised and facilitated an amazing storytelling session for a group of young entrepreneurs in the Kairos UK community. The session was focused on sharing and listening to stories from each other’s journey and reflecting on how we could use those powerful stories to enrich our own paths. It was an immensely powerful session that I will not forget in a hurry. I would not hesitate to recommend Annemieke to organisations that are serious about the wellbeing of their people.
Collaborating with Annemieke really is awesome. She has helped me several times, during periods when my thoughts seemed completely chaotic. Annemieke provides clarity, structure and knows how to get you back on track. Since we hold similar core values, and she gives everything she has, we can always talk openly and honestly about everything. I wholeheartedly recommend Annemieke as a 1-to-1 coach.
Dear Annemieke. Thank you for coaching me in my recovery from burn-out. You taught me to better understand and appreciate my true colours. You taught me the words to better describe my feelings. You enlightened my path.
Annemieke works with a lot of compassion and a lot of clarity. She knows how to properly hold up a mirror that will make you discover your new insights. Working with what’s alive for you at that moment, she invites you to explore and go deeper – creating clarity together.
I have been working with Annemieke for more than five years. We don’t talk to each other every day, but when we do work together, it always feels intimate from the get go. Maybe that’s because Annemieke listens so well and is just that personally connected to her work. Either way, she brings great quality – which creates a collaboration that always goes a little deeper than usual.
Annemieke is my first line of support when it comes to HR issues in the context of self-organization. There are plenty of people out there who have ideas about this, and very few who have actually worked and lived in organizations like this their whole working lives – for whom it is actually totally normal. That makes Annemieke one of the few coaches I regularly recommend to my own customers.
Annemieke is open, honest and has a great feel for the human side of organizations, as well as the developmental needs of people and teams. She helped us take the next step beyond Holacracy and organizing the responsibility for HR (a term that she secretly dislikes) in a different way within our team. She has made her own role superfluous, though to me she still feels included: happy to know she is just one phone-call away when we need support. In her role as a coach, she challenges my thinking and puts me to work, in a good way. I look back on our sessions with great pleasure.
Partners & clients
