About
Hello, my name is Catelijne Coopmans
I help people in and at the edges of academia find new openings for their work, career and writing.
As a coach, I am certified by the Co-Active Training Institute and by the International Coach Federation. I’ve done hundreds of hours of coach training and 500+ coaching sessions.
I’m also certified to work safely and impactfully with the body in personal development (Embodied Facilitator Course UK, 2019). I’ve facilitated dozens of writing- and career-workshops for universities in Europe, the UK, Asia and North America, as well as directly under my own business.
Before making the switch to coaching in 2017, I worked in academia as an interdisciplinary scholar, teacher and developer of curriculum. My PhD is in Management Studies (University of Oxford, 2006), and I’ve worked at universities in the UK, Singapore and Sweden in different (inter)disciplinary departments. For both my teaching and my research I have won awards.
I was a coach a long time before becoming one officially. As a teaching director for 5+ years, I managed allocations, peer reviews and awards nominations from the conviction that a thriving teaching community is one in which people can play to their strengths. I also impacted hundreds of residential college students through a programme of “reflecting on your life” workshops as well as individual coaching and mentoring.
You must build an empowered relationship with institutional academia, whatever that looks like for you. This often entails a return to who you truly are, as well as taking a radical stance for what you want to create.
Why I coach
I want to help protect and nurture the gifts that are so abundant in people drawn to academia. By this, I don’t mean intellectual brilliance or the ability to ‘perform’ in a narrow sense, but what we each care to create and contribute.
A sustainable and inspired academic life is one in which there’s room for the whole person. I coach and facilitate to help create more of that room, in individuals and communities.
I want us to have academic environments that are friendlier on the nervous system and better at supporting diverse talents.
A coach helped me move forward with dignity and integrity after I lost my tenure-track position. Another coach helped me grow as a leader after becoming a teaching director. I am so glad that I had that support! I now wish to be that support for others.
What I do when I’m not working
I love Girona, the town in which I live, and the woods that are so nearby. There’s something about the atmosphere here that really chimes with me. In the weekends, I go for walks with my partner Antonio and our dog Snupi. In the autumn, we hunt for edible wild mushrooms.
I am quite a homebody and like spending time cooking, eating and sitting on the couch watching Netflix.
My top 5 songs on Spotify for 2022 were by Daddy Yankee (Rumbatón), Manolo Garcia (Pajaros de Barro), Joris Holtackers (Paamiut and Nanortaliq) and Sigrid (A Driver Saved My Night). Listening and moving to music allows me to inhabit different parts of me, in the past and in the present.
Personal embodied practices in which I engage several times a week are traditional karate (Shitō-ryū) and writing Morning Pages.
