Sigrid van der Laan

About Sigrid van der Laan

Sigrid van der Laan is a trainer and consultant with a strong vision on career management, team development and networking. Her message is that the workplace is an important part of a person’s life, which is a complex matter that goes beyond a good performance review and financial rewards. She provides powerful directions, insightful models and a clear perspective on lifetime employability and win-win situations for employers and employees.

Recently she composed a manual on finding employment by networking and she writes a bi-weekly blog about her vision on the labour market.

During her study Sociology, Sigrid was fascinated by sustainable (human) development, gender and action research. These elements were united in her graduation thesis based on the potential introduction of energy saving cooking habits and living conditions on an archipelago in Nicaragua, where she stayed for seven months.

After her graduation she worked for a year at the Evert Vermeer Foundation, after which she moved to Nicaragua. The following 10 years she was involved in reconstruction projects after Hurricane Mitch, worked as an independent consultant on evaluations and preliminary studies for development programs and taught social sciences and philosophy at a local university. She is author of the book ‘Construir su propia vida. Dieciséis mujeres de Nicaragua’ (‘Building their own life. Sixteen Nicaraguan women’), based on interviews with women from different sections of the population of Nicaragua. The last four years of her stay in Nicaragua she worked for Plan International, where she was co-author of a method for community development ‘Juntándonos para el cambio. Metodología de participación auténtica’ (‘Joining us for change. Methodology of authentic participation’). Over the years she has specialized in participatory development processes.

In 2008 she returned to the Netherlands, where she invested her knowledge and experience at a child welfare organization. Subsequently, she made the move in 2011 to career management focusing on personal and professional development and team building. Her sources of inspiration remain Participative Human Development and Action Research. This is visible in her vision on career and team development. Her aim is to stimulate and inspire people and teams to develop their work styles and career within changing working conditions. Additionally, she is inspired by the many reorganizations and policy changes she has encountered in her career and the effects this has on employees and teams.

She is a member of the Board of Thembalethu Netherlands Foundation and a steering group member of Vlaardings Ondernemers Centrum (Vlaardingen Entrepreneurs Center).