We are suits & stories

Inès Gaston is a clinical psychologist and specialised in the brain. We tend to think that emotions overcome us, however you will learn that they are actually linked to activity in your brain. During suits and stories Ines will be sharing ways to hack your brain as we are more powerful than we think.

People value authenticity and some consider it to be the holy grail at work, but is it? What if your workplace is a theatre? What would be your role? How can you act convincingly and perform to a level that will get you a great round of applause? Shakespeare’s timeless stories help us to get a better understanding of human interaction in the workplace.

Tough business environments have a function and are needed to get things done. Wake up to get stuff moving. Today is better than tomorrow. Analyze data and trends, to course-correct. Yet at the same time, there are proven principles to ‘how to play the game’ in order to sustain performance, and your happiness. Drawing analogy from his previous life as a tennis player, Bob Rog will go into some personal (hard-won) lessons. For example, build self-awareness: If you have a strong forehand, position yourself for that stroke. Let your doubles partner stand on the other side. Bob will share his insights on leveraging a high performance environments with a more subjective, personal, side.

Henriette van Eeghen was confronted with a life changing question by accident 30 years ago. She will share her insights on how this question has changed her choices unintentionally and later more consciously. Over time she moved from the corporate world to the start of her own organization Impact Matters, where she connects the expertise and talents of the employees of the company with a specific challenge at a non-profit. She will provide you with a mirror to reflect upon under the Christmas tree.

According to the WHO every year more than 2 billion people can’t access lifesaving medicines. Imagine a world where the best healthcare is available for anyone no matter where they live. Imagine a world in which everyone’s life is valued equally. We still have a long way to go to build a fair healthcare ecosystem. Join Suits & Stories and hear how entrepreneur Sjaak Vink is disrupting global healthcare.

Advertising at its best reflects culture, becomes culture and moves it along. Sadly, most brands force-feed people with a continuous stream of uninspired, shitty content. One could even say that luxury, in this day and age, is a brand that leaves you alone. So how can brands change? The answer is creativity; the most powerful human tool that separates us from robots. Let’s use it.

Curious on how to build a career in corporate life, how to run politics or not?! I’m Roger Loo, known to the corporate world… I made clear choices to end up where I am now and that is just the beginning. How energy will help you control and boost you. Curious? Join me at Suits & Stories.

From a citizen with a job to a refugee camp in 24 hours. It happened to Tey. This life event showed him a silent problem: no identity is no access to society. As a digital native he found ways to make a real impact. His goal is to turn invisible people into invincible ones through digital identities. In June he will launch his book.

As executive coach Claire works in companies of all sorts and sizes. She has the guts to be a true mirror for boardroom players and reflects on the impact of their behaviour on others. Claire’s Story provides a look inside team dynamics at executive level and its effect on the rest of the organization. You will get new insights on how conflicting mindsets can be influenced by ‘presence’ and how this drives progress.

Founder and CEO of numerous companies Dennis de Graaf (35) is a highly successful entrepreneur. But after miraculously surviving brain cancer, Dennis decided to set himself a challenge. To help, inspire and motivate people to always believe in themselves. Dennis’ inspirational story is one that stimulates audiences to reflect and act.

New technologies hold both fantastic and disastrous promises for humanity. It depends on how we decide to put the new technologies to use – whether or not we do this “wisely”. Autonomous weapons, designer babies, social media… What do you think: will life in our Universe fulfil its potential or squander it? Is mankind capable of wisdom? Are you?

Bernadette is an entrepreneur at heart starting her first company at 26. She had her multi-million business successes and failures. And she is happy to share her calculated fuck-ups with us. Bernadette sees fuck-ups as inevitable for everybody who wants to undertake anything, they even carry value. Because you either win or learn.

During the past crisis years in Brazil Jelena was managing director of an important growth business of AkzoNobel. Her management team consisted of 9 Brazilians with very strong culture. How do you lead business turnaround in economic crisis? How do you lead organizational transformation in a country that is not your own, has a strong social and macho orientated culture? How does female “gringa” leader fits in this all? Jelena gives insights behind the scenes and inspiration for all of us to learn.

Wies is responsible worldwide for measuring, monitoring and managing conduct risks within ABN Amro. She will share her knowledge and experiences with respect to what we know from integrity & ethics management, behavioral science and behavioral economics. How this is relevant in preventing internal misconduct and fraud, and inspiring good conduct. How ABN Amro made mistakes and did not prevent employees from fraud. And what they have learned, and hopefully you will too!

ForFarmers Executive Committee member, Stijn Steendijk, will address what it takes to be a purpose-driven leader in today’s world, connecting corporate strategy with the reality of the people ‘in the field’. Stijn can draw on a wealth of experience in working at several blue chip companies. He was involved in many large-scale international change programs, such as the sale of the feed company Provimi to Cargill and the stock-listing of ForFarmers at the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

Seasoned sinologist Valérie Hoeks provides out-of-the-box strategic advice to companies at a crossroads with their Chinese partners. In her work, Valérie experiences that the underlying issue to most challenges in cooperation with Chinese, is the fact that we seem unable to consider the Chinese perspective. In her Story, Valérie will give you a short insight in that Chinese perspective and opens opportunities to look at cooperation in a new, refreshing way.

Rishi has disrupted the video surveillance industry several times by taking a quantum leap ahead of the market with new innovations. He co-founded CamaraManager, where he was one of the first in the world to launch cloud-based video surveillance. In 2013, CameraManager was acquired by Panasonic and in 2017 became part of Eagle Eye Networks (US), now the #1 in Cloud Video Surveillance worldwide. Rishi believes that both entrepreneurs and corporates would benefit from taking a big jump into the unknown in order to push the business forward at an accelerated pace.

Specialized in geriatrics and internal medicine, Andrea Maier investigates age related diseases and prolonging healthspan. She states that aging is actually a disease and we already should be capable to become 130 years old. A major barrier to achieve this, is our lifestyle. 70% of a long life is in our own hands, so what can business professionals with long hours in an office, behind a computers and high demanding jobs do for themselves and their teams?

Christine le Duc has been the erotic brand in the Netherlands for over 50 years. CEO Audrey van Ham has a mission for the whole of the Netherlands to have a happier sexlife and will explain how the brand has been rebuilt to be future proof in an omni-channel market. In this strategy, personal branding plays a big role. Audrey will provide insights in what it’s like to be the face of the company and how she uses this to build the brand.

Science tells us the world is heating rapidly, biodiversity is rapidly declining and our way of living is threatened. We need to change. The technology is there and the business case is easy: without a planet there’s no need for an economy. Yet we’re changing too slow. To build a sustainable society, we need to rethink our values, our beliefs and the default choices the system makes for us. We need a mindshift and a culture change. We need to rewrite the unwritten rules of culture.

Raja Felgata is a media entrepreneur, and ao. Founder of the platform The Diversity Top 100. She once presented the AT5 news (a local Amsterdam news channel) as one of the first presenters with a Moroccan-Dutch background. Broken through many ceilings herself, Raja will tell how she did this and why and how companies should make diversity and inclusion really happen at the workplace.

How do you stay confident and true to yourself in a world where you are judged on your looks? Tanja’s modelling life was a long journey of exploration. Coming from a background in journalism and working for the Dutch news programme for children, she suddenly had to deal with the fashion industry. She could have used some tips and tricks when she started out. Watch and learn from this different world and find how you can apply them to yours.

Deshnee has over 15 years experience in the corporate world, both in South-Africa and The Netherlands. Working in multinational companies has taught her to take everything with a pinch of salt and a bucket load of sarcasm is really the only way to survive. Deshnee will gives us a brutally honest insight on how this strategy has worked for and against her in the past and in her current leadership role.

Frank is one of the five forensic pathologists in the Netherlands. His autism is a talent and provides for his unique way of looking at things. Nowadays going in blank is seen as a virtue. Frank however argues that pre-information is key to solve problems although it also steers you. Is that a problem? Not if you are aware of it. How would you interpret the exact same observation based on a totally different set of information?