Co-founder · face of our Redesign and Re-empower doors

I have always been ambitious. In my youth that ambition pointed straight at money — I wanted to be rich, I was focused on things, on the material stuff — and that's honestly why I started as an auditor at Ernst & Young. I thought it was the path to a lot of money.

What I didn't yet understand was that I'm a deeply people-focused person. I was good at the work, but it was never the numbers that lit me up — it was the connections. They called me the sunshine of the office. I always stood out, and looking back, it was because the people were the real point for me all along.

I studied alongside my work for years — through my first years in auditing, then finishing my master's. Then I joined IKEA, and everything opened up. It was exciting, and my manager was working with NLP, which is where my own journey of self-development really began. Around that time I read Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits, and one image stopped me cold: the ladder. You can spend your whole life climbing, only to reach the top and realise it was leaning against the wrong wall.

That metaphor hit me because I knew exactly which wall I'd been climbing. The climbing had given me real things — significance, a sense that I belonged and was contributing. Those needs were genuine, and for a long time the climb met them. But I could see, finally, that I'd built my whole sense of significance on the climb itself — and that I could find that belonging and contribution another way, one I actually chose.

So I began retraining as a coach. It wasn't a single clean leap — I moved through project management, communication, training and change management along the way. But the direction was set. Stepping off that ladder wasn't failure. It was the first decision I'd made entirely for myself, intentionally, and that is the day the redesign actually began.

I love supporting woman whose life works on paper but no longer fits, and ready to claim her next level out loud. I coach, I train leaders, and I'm writing the book as well.

If you recognise yourself in any of that — the climb that gave you so much, and the quiet sense it's no longer the right wall — I'd love to connect.

Jolanda Schoneveld — co-founder, The Self-Leadership Academy.