About me
I grew up in the US, in Texas to be precise. So I can talk about barbed wire and cedar posts as well as philosophy and neuroscience.
Most of adult life I’ve lived in Europe, and most of that in The Netherlands, where I work with forward-looking businesses that want to innovate, both in their product and in their organization.
Selected Previous Clients
“Laura notices things others don’t see. Her love of life, her analytical mind, and knack for bridging information between disciplines makes her a joy to work with.”
“Laura found contradictions between our performance management system and the culture we wanted. Her design process helped us find our own solutions in a way that finally moved us forward.”
a few career highlights
Delivered a customer-centric (“outside-in”) leadership bench framework which would add between $5-13 billion in market valuation by raising leadership brand to market average; included business and talent metrics, and systems to track, trend, and manage impact of leadership development efforts.
Strategic redesign of leadership development programs to scale to serve 4x more participants with same budget by creating digital, blended, modular formats while also increasing relevance and quality via “ongoing and just-in-time” learning in LMS.
Co-created and scaled a change initiative to 2200 people managers within a 3 month period with 92% satisfaction ratings; applied data analytics to shape a targeted intervention, then executed by applying Agile and user-centric design methodology, testing and continuous improvement.
Developed a model for scaling culture change thorough leader-led team learning grounded in purpose; design of scalable yet customizable, modular content increased ownership and engagement for 1000+ employees in APAC serving 15 markets, strategic partnerships, CS, corporate functions.
Led teams through digital transformation of leadership learning programs, democratizing access to development opportunities and preparing to meet future business needs.
Coached leadership teams through challenging circumstances, to find more alignment, effective collaboration and improve decision making
Formerly I was the Director of Leadership Development for Royal DSM, and Global Manager for Leadership and Organizational Development at Booking.com. Besides working with many other companies as a consultant, I've worked regularly at THNK School for Creative Leadership & Innovation, the Royal Tropical Institute Intercultural Management Training Center, and lectured in universities. I’ve led numerous teams including at my own business Serious Play and I was a senior trainer and executive coach at Executive Performance Training in Amsterdam for many years.
Additional interests include whole systems design, complexity theory, and human rights, in particular girls' education and the impact of women's economic equality on global warming and peace.
What if?
I bring an unconventional background to organizational development, intentional culture building, future-of-work, learning and business strategy.
My approach comes from a mix of seemingly disparate experiences: my youth as a professional musician, conviction of the importance of the wisdom of the body learned through recovering from a near-death car accident, many years working as a corporate facilitator for leaders at over 25 different global companies, showing that team effectiveness is the way to measure leadership, being a parent, fascination with what makes people collaborate well and be creative together, studying anthropology, positive psychology, organizational psychology, organizational analysis, people analytics and adult development. My superpower has become applying the ears and eyes of an artist to vision, strategy, and practical business contexts.
The practice of design thinking brings it all together. Design methodology creates a possibility space to solve complex questions. Together with teams and organizational leaders, I’ve facilitated its application to organizational change, culture change, creating impactful learning and development and HR systems. It’s all about inspiring collaboration, being customer-centric, and passionately engaged. I’m able to help others embrace ambiguity and tolerate uncertainty and face adaptive challenges. Because I’m inherently curious and often make connections between things that others don’t, it’s easy for me to help leaders and teams get in a creative mindset, to think big and ask, “What if?”
What are the stories yet untold?
One of my main interests is in how stories and voices outside the mainstream can impact innovation, technology, and leadership to contribute to the greater good. What is real inclusive teamwork? How can people tell their own stories and find their own solutions? How can you create a more beautiful life, starting with work life? When these kinds of questions lead a customer-centric approach to organization design, inspiring outcomes result.
future-of-work
I believe everything we do in organizational design and future-of-work should come from having an inspiring vision of the future. What kind of world do we want to live it?
People run technology. Technology alone will not save us, but as we develop ourselves and our vision of the future, we can apply technology in inspiring ways that improve health and safety, free up more time for meaningful work, and improve quality of life globally.
Within the HR context, I’m fascinated with how AI and machine learning may be used to counter bias, positively impact performance management, use data to bust myths about leadership, or help reinforce positive behavioral change. How can technology be informed by human centric design, to help with workforce planning, moving an organization to a learning culture, or help people collaborate better?
Working with people in the technology sector, I’ve become fascinated with bridging technology and the human. This was also one of my interests as a musician; I was working with sensors and electronic music back when it was “experimental.”
Origins
Growing up & education
An American who has has worked all over the world and been living in Europe for most of my adult life, with a partner from yet another culture, intercultural competencies have been a must. With parents who came from working-class families, farmers and welders, practical application is something in my bones.
I grew up with a father who could talk to anyone anywhere, and a mother who flew airplanes, played piano, and sang cat food jingles in the supermarket, as well as running a business. My parents valued education above all else. They drove my sister and I across town 25 minutes to an experimental ecology based, Montessori primary school which I attended until age 10. Then I benefitted from creativity based education programs for gifted students in Texas public schools, before finishing high school in Michigan at the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy, followed by liberal arts study including anthropology and German literature alongside my major in music at the University of Michigan. I gained an academic rigor alongside creative expression from music performance.
Thereafter I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I engaged in numerous music projects, ran my own ensemble, taught music to inner-city youth and young children while witnessing the dot-com boom. In 2003 I completed a masters study at the Amsterdam Conservatory.
Resilience
Since my late teens, the wisdom of the body has been something tangible to me. I’ve seriously engaged in studying body-mind training systems like Alexander Technique, taiji, meditation, mindfulness and peak performance techniques. This was not only to support my professional performance work, but also in large part to help me recover from a major car accident in which my spine was broken at age 14. The fact that I can walk is a miracle, and I’m never short on gratitude for that.
No matter what area I’m working in, I’m always looking forward, and I have a conviction that change is always possible.
Music - deep listening & looking to see the familiar in new ways
As a clarinetist I performed with major orchestras including the San Francisco Symphony, and played at major festivals including the Berio Festival in the Berlin Philharmonie. The new and experimental always exerted a gravitational pull on me, and I’ve collaborated with many composers in the creation of new works and in numerous cross-disciplinary projects. I specialized in performing contemporary music with text and theatrical settings, and my experience with vocal work became a central part of my previous work as a voice coach for executive clients. For years I investigated audience interaction and staged concerts in unconventional ways, rigorously looking to see the familiar in new ways. One of the paradoxes musicians must master is the need to refine material without it becoming mechanical.