About FEMs

FEMs mentor is experienced and an objective sounding board. She deploys her knowledge but, above all, her life experience where, in addition to a professional career, private life is also clearly considered. She has experience within the profession and has therefore struggled with similar challenges herself. Mentoring is based on personal experience, offering expertise, knowledge, and experience in the longer term. For this reason, a mentor is suitable to help you achieve the same kind of goal. As an external mentor, FEMs also guarantees a safe and open conversation. Sharing experiences and mirroring each other often gives you just that little push to take a new step with confidence.

The Mentor

I, Rian Brokx, mother of two children, analytical but also a sensitive person, discovered soon after my studies (chemistry, marketing and business administration) that my strength and preference were mainly in managing people. I became more and more fascinated by the issue of motivating employees.

In over 30 years as a director, I gained a lot of experience as a manager in various change processes (mergers, acquisitions, restructuring) both nationally and internationally. Success is always a result of the commitment and performance of the team of employees. Diversity plays a major role in this. In this light, I have always strived for 'dream teams' that can be successful thanks to a mix of the specific skills and characteristics of the men and women who make up them. Men and women complement each other perfectly; one-sidedness is disastrous in the long run.

Besides, it also gave me great satisfaction to see when employees were in place and how they then subsequently developed and performed themselves. I saw women here more often, due to the many tasks that specifically came on their plates, become unbalanced, causing them to sell themselves short, resulting in absenteeism and departures. Intrigued by these experiences, I started following the Master's in Executive Coaching at VU University Amsterdam. I had experienced practice but I also felt it was important to delve more into the theory behind how to support people to get the best out of themselves. Here, I was trained in the various aspects of mentorship. On the one hand, the career-oriented but also definitely the personal support where practical own experiences are combined with scientific insights. Always with the starting point of connecting head and heart, allowing the person to achieve balance in private and work life.

For some time now, I have been using my knowledge and experience to support women in their careers, clearly considering their other ambitions such as mother, caregiver, partner, etc. In my experience, the mental pressure on female talent increases, leading to absenteeism and disengagement instead of the desired flow in the organisation. If, as an organisation, you take diversity seriously and cherish the female talent within the company, or perhaps you yourself are interested, please contact FEMs without obligation.