About
About Us
We met each other in the early nineties in Vaals, a town on the frayed edges of Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.
A melting pot of nationalities, where the upper-, under- and middle-class dogs agree on one thing: We don’t belong anywhere, we are not Dutch, not German and not Belgian, but we belong together. Historically a smugglers town, we grew up in a community of “non-conformists”, artists, academics and free thinkers, which has given us in later adulthood a wealth of “remember when” stories and unparalleled insights into the diversity of the human psyche and its mechanisms.
We developed from adolescent to adult women in a community where we learned that clichés do not exist without a reason, while at the same time they were debunked daily. We discovered that understanding each other takes more than speaking each other’s language. That empathy is the magic that brings people together, creating the most beautiful collaborations, and that it is not your education, the money in your bank account, or trust fund that is the determining factor for happiness and success, but the ability to connect with divergent people at a deeper level; your creativity and innovative capacity, your mindset and cultural, and communicative empathy.
Rivka Valkenberg
Co-Founder & Cultural StrategistRivka is a cultural strategist and coach with a deep-rooted urge to make projects, organizations and individuals thrive. Her core competence is the combination of strategy, deployment and sustainable implementation. Rivka is highly analytical, entrepreneurial and creative. As a result, she immediately puts her finger on the sore spot, sees the weak aspects of a plan or situation and finds innovative solutions and new concepts. As a professional she performs best at the intersection of different cultures, in dynamic and diverse surroundings. She does not shy away from taking the lead in complex situations. Rivka has strong leadership skills. She is a goal-oriented connector on the basis of trust and craftsmanship. Dedicated to get the job done and always aims for a sustainable cooperation with specific and qualitative results.
Tanya Akin
Co-Founder, Strategist & CoachTanya is passionate about shaping organizations to compete and provide a livable working environment, driving lasting transformational change and unlocking leadership potential, skills and mindsets for all members of the organization. Tanya is dedicated to ensuring holistic impact by helping leaders, teams and individuals define a clear purpose and in designing an agile and flexible strategy to deliver on this. She sees enterprises, their leaders and teams as an equal source of value and collaborates in creating people strategies so that organizations have the skills they need to face today's volatile playing field now and in the future. She develops and implements initiatives to shape healthy cultures and shift mindsets to facilitate sustainable organizational transformations.