About Anna,

Let me give you a little, but real, piece of my mind as a way of introducing myself

What being human means to me is…
I am looking for ways to move forward, to grow,
I have had struggles and serious challenges
I have experienced periods in which this was on top of my mind…
How do I find my life partner?
How do I keep a relationship good in difficult times?
How do I deal with health issues of my child?
How do I take good care of a baby, a toddler, a school child?
How do I take care of a good work-life balance?
How do I stay fit when there are so many other things demanding for your attention?
How do I deal with all the turmoil in the world?

I am dedicated to keep on learning
To be a better person
To create more harmony and happiness in my home
To know where I am and where I want to go
To feel grounded
I am not the struggles in my life
I am not the situations in my life

I can tell you about my age, my nationality, or income
Is that whom I am?
I can tell you about my roles, my possessions or taste for fashion
Does that say something about whom I am?

Whom I really am is that part of me that observes
That part of me that observes and is,
It’s not my ego.
On a normal or special day I feel, I observe, I learn, I grow
I love and I am being loved
I belong and can be lost
I am right and can be wrong
I am successful and I make mistakes
I am happy where I am and eager for more
I do have likings
I like harmony, stillness, and passion
I like to focus on what binds people, our similarities
I like to dream together with other people
I like to talk about things that really matter: how we can create more happiness
Happiness starts with being happy with yourself
Being happy at home

At home
That special place where everyone starts their life together with other people
That place where I believe that each and everyone of us is supposed to be taught…
How to deal with our emotions
How to deal with different opinions
How to communicate lovingly also when there is a power difference
How to embrace and communicate about emotional needs
How to listen
How to trust
How to say sorry
How to comfort someone whom we have hurt
How to relate to someone who has hurt us

At home
That place where you are supposed to be encouraged
to follow your heart in this life
to discover your likings and desires
to talk about your struggles, weaknesses and doubts
to share your thoughts, jokes and strengths
to share how to listen to the ‘whispers of the universe’ as I heard Oprah putting it beautifully

We can’t change the past
We can decide to build a powerful and warm culture in the home we have Now
Whether we live alone or with other people in our house.
We all can decide to do the work
To work on our own patterns of thinking and behaviour that impact our lives

What is important to know about me is that
I am just like you
I am looking for love and purpose in this life
I am moving closer to discover more of whom I am every day
A feeling of ‘coming home’ that I wish everybody would experience
That’s why I want this program to be out there
If you allow it to do it’s work it can serve you as a Life Assistant
A Life Assistant that helps you to reflect and improve your life by yourself
The program then serves you in the journey to your own heart.

This text says quite a lot about me
It tells you how I view life
Still interested in my personal story? 😉 In the Masterclass I tell you quite a bit. You will also get a lot of personal examples of how I dealt with struggles and challenges during the CYC program itself.

Hope to see you there when you are ready.

Love,
Anna

NB: In case you are interested to see some professional facts: check below 😉

Professional Experience

Development of the Creating Your Culture Program with dr. Johan Boudewijns

Boudewijns Advisory Group Researcher & Trainer & co-developer of culture change programs
Assignments with companies in e.g. Energy (grid services) and Pharma.

Managing partner for Boudewijns Advisory Group in East-Africa Researcher & Trainer & co-developer of culture change programs
Assignments as e.g. a key trainer and project coordinator of leadership trainings for the largest telecommunications company in the East-African region (subcontracted) and conducted a Culture Diagnosis of a Media House with branches in Tanzania and Uganda. 

Boudewijns Advisory Group Researcher & Trainer 
Assignments with e.g. infant nutrition plants in the Netherlands, Belgium and in South-East Asia and semi-governmental institutions.

Utrecht University, Master International Development Studies
Master thesis: ‘Survival Sex: an option or a lifestyle’. About the lifestyle of young mothers in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Thesis was rewarded with the 3rd prize of the global master thesis contest of the United Nations. 

Utrecht University, Bachelor Cultural Anthropology
Minor Conflict Studies
Minor Development Geography

About Johan,

Since early childhood I was fascinated by the fact that people are stuck in something they are not happy with and don’t manage to move out of it. I have learned that we all develop a culture of behavior with which we shape our lives. Our success, our wealth, our social life, and our health. No one intentionally creates poor results or a life of misery but our culture of behavior may have that inevitable effect. I was dedicated to find the keys to changing the culture of my upbringing into a culture that would give me a happy life. A culture that would be more effective in achieving the results or life one seeks. I developed a methodology to achieve this (PhD research) and started to help organizations to build a highly effective behavior culture. To date we helped thousands of people to improve their culture in organizations. These organizations saw a strong increase of their performance in all areas.

Thanks to Anna – an employee working for us since 2007 – we now offer the program to enhance the quality of our personal lives in all areas. It shed light on my own personal journey than it had ever before, and I may describe it as a journey home; a journey from my safe place, my head, to landing in my body. I have learned we can only really enjoy our life if we are in our body; it is our gateway to being in the Now moment. Is your body safe? If yes; your body should feel relaxed. If you feel stress nonetheless, it is a product of your thought. And our thoughts are never now, they are always about a past that doesn’t exist anymore or a future that has not been experienced by anyone. Developing this program helped me realize this ever more.

I live in the town I love SO much because it is full of live because of the many students and cafes and easy going restaurants and because of its beautiful forests around. I love nature very much. I enjoy living with my wife Femmy and our two daughters Sofie and Olivia and our dog Sam. Getting up in the morning is a happy moment; we are generally all eager for the day and as you understand by now or will learn, this has everything to do with the knowledge and tools of the program.

My dream is to provide the program to all the people that feel attracted to it and increase their quality of lives big time. I also dream about supporting our planet with financial revenues because I love nature, it deserves our respect and protection and I love my children to be secured of a nice future. Besides being a vegetarian since I was 9 years old I do many things to decrease and compensate for my family’s footprint including the building of a Biogas installation in Africa and donations to WWF and local nature protection programs and investments in sustainability projects. Other activities I like is playing with my children, playing the guitar, I made many of our closets myself, I love physical exercise, I love the laptop life I have as it enables me to work in nice cafes. 

So, now you know a bit about me and you’ll learn more about me during the program but of course that is not important. What IS important is that you’ll learn more about YOU; about what YOU value, about what a High Quality Life means for you, about the barriers you may have to improve the quality of your live, and about the small steps that will work for you to remove these barriers and make big changes and live a beautiful life on this beautiful planet.

I wish you’ll experience an ever increasing happiness because you live your own values, you can enjoy the moment and you have a life’s culture that includes the resilience to bounce back during setbacks. 

Warm greetings,

Johan

Professional experience

Director at Boudewijns Advisory Group (2007- now)

Assignments to change corporate cultures: diagnosing, assessing and changing the organization’s unwritten rules.
Industries:

• Food Process Industry, infant nutrition
• Pharmacy industry
• Air- and rail traffic control
• Aviation industry
• (Inter)national Grid services
• Dutch ministries, National chamber of commerce, National tax office
• International banks and assurance companies
• Health Care
• Media house (East Africa)

Character of assignments:

• Changing the behavior culture of thousands of employees, coaching boards of directors

Areas of assignments:

• Europe, Asia, Africa, USA.

My education

• Doctorate and Master degree in Business at Radboud university
• Philosophy Cambridge UK
• Philosophy University of California at Berkeley
• Business courses at:
• LNBE Erasmus University of Rotterdam
• University at Manchester

I Lectured at

• Radboud University 
• Nyenrode Business University
• Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
• Corporate Academies
• (International) conferences / key note

My career path

• Current: director of Boudewijns Advisory Group (since 2007)
• Assistant professor / PhD graduate Radboud University
• Researcher Radboud University

Publications

I wrote four books and a diversity of articles:

• The 6 culture patterns of successful organizations, Reliable performance in a volatile world (2020)
• Alice in Organizationland (2005) (best seller)
• delta 5: unwritten rules as the key to creating a learning organization and sustainable success (2010) (candidate management book of the year / Netherlands)
• Ongeschreven regels in perspectief (2005)(Unwritten Rules in Perspective, a method to diagnose Unwritten Rules and their effects on the capability to learn), PhD thesis, only available in Dutch)