Background and perspective
Sitting on both sides of the table.
I trained as a scientist in molecular genetics and chemical engineering and hold a doctorate. I then founded and built companies and carried the decisions that come with them. Today I bring both to founders and CEOs: an engineer's habit of looking for the structure underneath the symptom, and a founder's memory of how lonely the final call can be.
Experience and research
Three sources of judgement.
Entrepreneurial leadership. Twenty years building start-ups and serving as CEO in the corporate world, including four years on MaterFly, the venture in women's mental health that became Dana, then founding Kuma Partners. I know what it is to carry the whole company, including the parts that never reach the pitch deck.
Executive and international practice. Over 100 founders, managing directors and C-suite leaders guided across 1:1 advisory, executive peer councils and board-level interventions throughout Europe, in English, Spanish, German and French.
Academic research and governance. Research with IESE Business School since a 2015 case study with Prof. Iñigo Gallo. Today, with Prof. Dr. Thomas Kluetter (IESE Business School) and Prof. Dr. Nicolas Deuschel (IE Business School), I study how founders with non-linear minds lead and govern. My recent work focuses on cognitive preferences, within and beyond the neurodivergent spectrum, and their effect on leadership.
The path here
From genetics to the C-suite.
Science
Molecular genetics, then chemical engineering and a doctorate. Genetics taught me that the visible trait is rarely where the cause sits; engineering added process thinking: flows, feedback loops, bottlenecks and failure modes.
European institutions
Both my parents worked for the EU institutions and I went to the European School in Brussels. I learned early that most conflict between capable people comes from different operating assumptions rather than bad intent.
Operator
Twenty years building start-ups and serving as CEO in the corporate world, including four years on MaterFly, which became Dana, a venture in women's mental health. I know both seats from the inside.
IESE and IE Business School
Research and teaching since a 2015 case study with Prof. Iñigo Gallo. Today I research neurodivergent founders and CEOs with Prof. Thomas Kluetter (IESE) and Prof. Nicolas Deuschel (IE Business School).
Executive advisory
Lead Partner at Kuma Partners. Over 100 founders, managing directors and C-suite leaders guided across 1:1 advisory, executive peer councils and board-level interventions, in four working languages.
The intersection
Neuroscience, organisations and governance.
Three lenses run through everything I do. Neuroscience explains what happens to judgement under pressure: why smart people narrow their options, defend positions and avoid the conversation that matters. Organisational behaviour explains how those individual patterns harden into team habits. Governance is where the fix usually lives, in who decides what, with which information and by when.
Most interventions stay in one lens. Coaching works on the individual and leaves the structure untouched. Consulting redesigns the structure and ignores the people who have to live in it. I work across all three, because the friction a CEO feels personally is usually the same friction the organisation produces structurally.
I keep the jargon out of the room. The measure of the work is simple: you decide better, faster and with less collateral damage than before.
Core foundation
What you can hold me to.
- Co-creation
- You know your company. I bring pattern recognition from many others. The answer is built together, and you own it.
- Courage
- I will say what others in the room cannot or will not. That includes the part of the problem that sits with you.
- Principled tension
- Some tensions should not be resolved quickly. I hold them open long enough for a better decision to emerge.
- Absolute integrity
- Confidentiality is total. I do not take work where my interests and yours could pull apart, and I say so when something is outside my competence.
A first conversation
Bring the decision you have been circling.
A first conversation is confidential and exploratory. If I am not the right person for what you describe, I will say so.