Every December brings a familiar feeling for me. Not sadness, but a sense of incompleteness, like walking into a newly designed room that’s almost finished, but not fully yours yet.  This week, while closing my last coaching sessions of the year, that feeling appeared again. I was grateful for the people, the progress, the conversations… and still, there was an awareness that something in me wasn’t fully processed yet.  When I first moved to Vienna over a decade ago, my whole

When I look back at 2011, I see a version of myself standing in a life that felt suddenly unfamiliar. A new city. A new language. A new hat of motherhood. A new identity I was not yet prepared to inhabit. It felt like waking up inside a house whose layout had changed overnight. I was moving through rooms I no longer recognised.  And I remember wishing, deeply, that someone would show me how to set a direction and move forward on a map with clarity.  If you’ve ever felt unsure

This week, while getting ready for another social event, I caught myself feeling something I hadn’t expected. I was looking forward to the people, the conversations, the atmosphere and yet a part of me wished the season moved a little slower. It wasn’t the gatherings themselves that felt overwhelming, but the pace, the food, the rushing from place to place, and the constant expectation to be ‘on’.  Every year, we enter December with the intention to connect, celebrate and hon

This week, while reading Designing Your Life further, one insight stayed with me: designing a life is not only about imagining multiple futures, but also about learning how to build them through real-world experiments, conversations and support.   It reminded me of my early days in architecture. Beautiful concepts meant nothing until we tested materials, gathered feedback and refined the design. The second half of the book makes the same point: a well-designed life is not sha

While sketching ideas in my notebook when I was reading our new selection in Book Insider Book Club  ‘Designing Your Life’; a thought landed with surprising clarity: we rarely design our lives the way an architect designs a space. We decorate , we adjust , we patch , but we rarely take a blank sheet and ask:  ' What if I could design my life again, how many versions could I create?’   Research from Stanford’s Life Design Lab and behaviour science shows that people stick to lo

Many professionals today are stuck in unresolved interpersonal conflicts that drain their energy and confidence at work.  When people don’t feel seen, heard, understood, or accepted  for the way they think and operate, tension builds beneath the surface. It starts small, a misinterpreted email, a meeting that feels colder than usual, but over time, it creates invisible barriers between colleagues. Unresolved conflict affects not only performance but also well-being and well-d

About ten years ago, I stepped away from my life as an architect and entered the world of coaching, training, and speaking. I shifted from drawing physical spaces to co-designing growth journeys that help people build clarity, confidence, and consistent action.  It was a choice born of urgency. I looked at the work I loved, the life I wanted, and realised the blueprint needed redrawing. I never looked back.  In retraining myself, I discovered that the same architectural minds

I’ve been noticing a pain pattern across industries and leadership levels, an overload of written, polished exchanges paired with a decline in authentic verbal communication.  Technology, especially large language models, are amazing tools when used mindfully. Yet somehow, they have made it harder for professionals to structure and host truly meaningful conversations, the kind that build trust, resolve tension, and move things forward.  Just the other day, during a coaching s

A few weeks ago, during my leadership coaching sessions, a client from the U.S. shared her frustration; she was struggling with the direct feedback style of her European colleagues.  Only a few days later, another client from Vienna expressed the opposite challenge; he was puzzled by the indirect communication tone of his American team.  Both right, both confused.  That same week, I started reading Erin Meyer’s The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Glo

There’s something almost magical about a stage before the lights come on; that quiet, that moment right before stories start to flow.  Last week at the Female Future Festival   in Vienna, I felt exactly that energy, the kind that reminds you why we gather, why we speak, and why it still matters to be in the room!   As a speaker and a coach, I’ve seen powerful connection happen in pixels and in person and I’ve always believed that words can build bridges, whether they travel t

It was early summer when Ann e Barnea from Think Beyond Group  invited me to join their new leadership podcast, Think Beyond Talks . As...

Lately, my coaching work with BetterUP   has connected me with leaders and senior managers from the Fiji Islands to Brazil, from the USA...

How do you move forward when your body tells you to stop, yet life doesn’t slow down?     Last week, I woke up with a sore throat and a...

Last week, as I opened my calendar after the holidays, I realized it wasn’t just work picking up speed. Coffee catchups, school meetings,...

A few days ago, as I put on my running shoes for the first time after my knee injury, I felt both excitement and hesitation. My mind was...

Every September, I try to keep up with a small ritual.   In the first days back from holidays, I walk through my apartment and notice...

When the new arrives, it often feels bigger than us.   For the past 6 weeks, I’ve been traveling and working from Asia with my family....

A strange thing happened while I was on holidays last week: At this important fork in the road, I stopped chasing clarity and that’s when...

When life or work throws you into a new environment, what do you do?  Let me tell you about my unexpected adventure in Hanoi:  For two...

Summer feels different, doesn’t it?   The pace slows. Meetings get postponed. And conflicting thoughts start to surface:  “I’ve earned...