“I knew I had to save the last bullet for myself”

‘There was an angel sitting on my shoulder too,’ says Dominique Schreinemachers, who officially stopped flying for the Royal Dutch Airforce in 2023 after 20 years. During her military career, Dominique founded The Boost Company. With a team of military pilots, she aims to share the skills and insights gained through their education and experiences. ‘Studying behavioural influence psychology at the Academy of Behavioural Sciences in Leiden has given me insight into how I think and work. This allows me to see through the whole experience and understand the pros and cons of the intense training that my colleagues and I underwent. We can close the circle and answer questions during presentations, workshops, and boost training sessions, often better than others, because all our trainers have brought back many real experiences with which they can now motivate people.’

Everyone can spread their wings

Dominique is one of the few female Airforce pilots trained by Vietnam veterans in the United States. She brings with her a wealth of experience in leadership, teamwork, and personal and professional growth. Her stories and insights on emotions, intuition, task orientation, and behaviour are both engaging and motivating. ‘I give several keynotes, each with a different starting point. I discuss topics like security within a corporate environment and diversity, including the position of women in male-dominated settings. My general inspirational speech starts with the basics, focusing on how military personnel like us become conscious of who we are in that respect. Other stories are already sensational—my hostage situation, my frozen toes, or my training with the Korps Commandotroepen, the elite special forces unit of the Royal Netherlands Army—but I end my lecture with the crash story, because that’s where everything comes together. Part of the audience goes home feeling they have watched a movie. We provide them with an experience, giving them new insights and a feeling of success. It’s our sincere belief that everyone can spread their wings, improve their mindset, and transcend themselves.’

Realising who we are makes the world a better place

The Truth is Never The Same

The team around Dominique has developed a powerful programme based on the way pilots think. ‘Pilots are expected to execute complex and challenging missions, requiring specific skills. All capabilities, methods, and skills needed for success are embedded in the programme.’ Dominique understands that people view things through their own filtered lenses, forming opinions and prejudices based on their own truths. ‘I make them aware of that during keynotes and training sessions.’ Combining all these truths can lead to strange and limiting conclusions. ‘Exactly, and this does not only apply to individuals. We also offer complete programmes for companies, so-called boost training sessions.’ Participants are not required to crawl through mud or face gruesome situations. Some companies do offer real bootcamps, but that’s not to everyone’s liking. ‘That’s why we have analysed ways to do it differently, focusing on smaller behaviours. That now seems to be very valuable.’ According to Dominique, people don’t need to change immediately. ‘Become aware of who you are, without needing a psychologist. Getting to know yourself is extremely difficult, which is proven by the fact that our company is exploding without any publicity.’ Does Dominique fully know who she is? ‘Never. Learning about ourselves never stops.’ Sometimes it turns out that what you’ve thought to be true all your life is not true at all. Dominique says, ‘As long as you learn from it and realise that some of your past thoughts were strange, and wonder why you were so adamant about certain things. That’s the moment when you put a small piece of change in the right place. That is an automatic gain for the future.’

As a behavioural psychologist who draws on neuroscience, Dominique notes that pilots experience very intense things but rarely get PTSD. ‘That is partly due to certain selection methods and thorough psychological training. We are trained for €2,000,000 each.’

The Only Woman

At age 11, Dominique already realised she wanted to become a military pilot, seeing it as the coolest job ever. After completing her army training at 18 or 19, she chose the Cougar helicopter over the F-16. ‘I wanted to be part of a team and didn’t really realise that I was a woman in a men’s team. Nowadays it’s an issue, and people address it all the time. Men never treated me differently; women DID. I am, I think, the odd one out among women.’

Twenty years on, she misses flying, but the constant study required to keep up became too much alongside her other ambitions. ‘My husband is the pilot of a trauma chopper. Recently, I got the chance to fly with him, and then I felt I was missing it. But being the mother of two young children, I don’t feel the need to go on a mission again. Furthermore, the world is changing, and telling others about things the world should know energises me.’ Her Speakers Academy keynotes are very successful. ‘That is my goal because I truly believe that if people adopt the mindset and practices my team and I promote, we can build a better world.’ The same thought sparked her career as an army pilot. Now, everything comes together with The Boost Company. ‘I work with mostly military pilots in my own company and have actually formed my own little Airforce.’

Source: International ACADEMY Magazine 2024