anouk kooijman
Anouk is born in a family of entrepreneurs. Her interest in organizational behavior and management led her to complete a Masters in Business Economics and a Post Graduate study in Management Accounting. After working for a publishing company for a few years, she found her calling as a management consultant with Moret, Ernst & Young, Utrecht, The Netherlands in 1992. There was never a dull moment throughout her 5-year stay with the company, as she had to face new and challenging business environments every week, sometimes even every day.

In 1997, she took over as CEO from her father, a family business, and managed Polydaun Holding, Zevenaar, The Netherlands, a 20-million Euro company with staff strength of 90. Though the handover phase was no easy task, she was able to turn the company around in less than a year from a loss into sustainable growth and healthy profit. She also led the company to a 25% growth in 4 years in the outdoor business, and strengthened the brand’s position (brand awareness grew from around 40% to 60%).

Anouk realized that her strength is in the creation of something that is not there yet. She also grasped the importance of generating new ideas for products, markets, or in the way we do business. The bottom line results of the company showed her that growth always comes from good ideas.

With her settling down in Singapore in 2002, Anouk took her passion further and became a trainer specializing in creative thinking. Crucially, the change allowed her to focus on the things she does best – inspiring people to exploit their brains to its full potential, and develop this into a process for organizational and personal growth. With 15 years of management, training and consultancy experience, Anouk is at her best in an environment with intellectual and creative challenges, and organizations and people in transition.

Some of the organizations she has trained or facilitated for include Unilever Asia (Malaysia and Singapore), Infineon Singapore, Singapore Polytechnic, American Association CRCE Singapore (Career Resource Centre Expatriates), The Swiss Club and ZED.