What is going on?
Conversations with investment advisor Maryann Gebauer Jul 11, 2025 An update on the Netherlands: Elze Van Hamelenhttps://maryanngebauer.substack.com/p/an-update-on-the-netherlands-elze *** Feb 22, 2025 What is going on
A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.
- Catherine the Great
For a transition to a thriving and inspired society, we need to reinvent the way we organize, cooperate and produce. Traditional cultural values, such as stewardship, may inform new, value driven entrepreneurship as a platform for individual creativity and social change. I support this transition in the following ways:
| Consultancy | Training | Coaching |
FOCUS
To the invention room: meeting challenges with creativity
Societies are facing multiple stresses: polarization, economic insecurity, the threat of war, and major changes in the way we live. These are causing a fundamental, existential insecurity. This insecurity throws us back onto our own resources, and invites us to reinvent everything: What gives us meaning, how we cooperate, lead and organize. Instead of a knee-jerk defensive or survival reaction – hoe can we meet the challenges of our time with creativity? This demands innovation, imagination and a willingness to take action. Minor adaptions to the status quo will not lead to breakthrough solutions. For a breakthrough, we need to enter the ‘invention room’ – a space of open and free exchange of all viewpoints, where all options are on the table, leading to discovery of real opportunity.
Successful organizations as platforms for meaningful cooperation and maximizing individual creativity
Successful solutions require action: the formulation and execution of concrete and practical alternatives. They require joint action, in businesses or other organizations. In our over-organized society, with organizations that are small bureaucracies, the individual is often squashed. Nothing drains motivation and engagement quicker than feeling like a cog in a machine or just working for your paycheck. This lack of engagement has high costs. People thrive when there is room for individual expression and development, while cooperating in a meaningful way with others on joint goals. The most successful organizations do just that: they provide a platform for meaningful cooperation and individual creative expression.
SERVICES
For businesses
Community action
Lectures
Research
For businesses
Stewardship – Sustainability with relevance for business
The cultural tradition of stewardship takes man’s place in creation as a point of departure, from a position of care and responsibility. Sustainability from this angle provides a lens to realize the company’s mission and vision. It is about operationalizing your values and provides a framework for innovation and a basis for cooperation. The positive impacts, financially, and societal, socially and environmentally, then follow automatically.
In my experience, sustainability is very much driven by standardized frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) or the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). In my opinion, they distract from the real issues, and force businesses to focus on topics that are not relevant and are costly. In this way, sustainability becomes an exercise to check boxes and gets reduced to slick marketing.
At its core, sustainability is about: how do I contribute with my business? What will be its legacy? How do I ensure that my employees come to work with excitement and inspiration? That is stewardship. It requires to evaluate the basis of the business operations – what was the mission and vision with which the company was founded? How do you maximize positive, and minimize negative impacts? Succes is always dependent on fruitful collaboration with all stakeholders.
- I support businesses with the development of its mission and vision, and the programs to implement them, talent development for inspired employees, stakeholder engagement and sustainable product development.
- My approach is strategic and analytical, with a sensitivity for how the social context affects success.
Risk assessment of land use policies on business
Worldwide, major changes are being implemented in our living environments through changes in land use policies. These policies are designed to implement an energy transition, water transition, reduce car use and restrict mobility in urban zones, create smart cities and space for nature and rewilding, and more. The changes in land-use regulations can have serious consequences for the long-term strategy and permits of your business.
- I give lectures about these changes in land use policy and their implications, and can support you in executing a risk assessment.
To defend against a regulatory assault that puts profitable business operations at risk, joint action is necessary. I support in developing cooperative platforms for joint action.
For more information please contact
info @ vanhamelen.eu
info @ vanhamelen.eu
Community action
When people want a say in major changes to their local environment, they often run into bureaucratic walls of the municipality and province. Where do you find information? How do you engage in constructive conversation with legislators? What steps can you take? If you want to gain insight and grip on local politics, Elze can support you with advice or in a workshop.
For more information, please contact
info @ vanhamelen.eu
Lectures
In the last couple of years I have researched a broad array for topics for different independent media platforms:
Damaging effects of wind energy, the unsustainability of the energy transition, effects of UN policies on nation states, farmers, fishermen and food security, governance and democracy, smart city and surveillance, health effects of electromagnetic radiation, lab-grown meat, propaganda, behavioral government and cognitive warfare, and Jungian psychology.
When working in the field of sustainability, my focus was on sustainable chemistry using ‘The Natural Step’ framework.
I give lectures about the topics that I have written about.
For more information please contact
info @ vanhamelen.eu
Research
‘De grote verbouwing van Nederland’, (2023). The book on ‘the great remake of the Netherlands’ is a collection of articles that I wrote for ‘De Andere Krant’ (The other newspaper, a Dutch reader funded printed newspaper), that cover how UN-policies are integrated in national and local land-use regulations, and the effects of these policies on citizens.
Conversation with Maryann Gebauer on developments in the Netherlands: Link
Het Windmolendrama (2023) The ‘Windturbinedrama’ discusses the unfeasibility of the energy transition and unpacks all the damages to health, the environment and justice caused by industrial windturbines in the Netherlands. Link to English translation of the report, and conversations in podcasts.
Dutch Farmers and Fishermen. Local Heroes in the Global War on Our Food and Property Rights, (2023). Research conducted for the Solari Report of Catherine Austin Fitts.
Interview door Catherine Austin Fitts: link
‘Pharma Food. Biotech on Your Plate: The Next Chapter in Big Money’s Battle to End Food Sovereignty’ (2022). Research conducted for the Solari Report of Catherine Austin Fitts.
‘‘Market transformations in the chemical sector. The Chemical Sector: From Care to Circularity’ (2020). Boekbijdrage aan ‘Changing the Game. Sustainable Market Transformation Strategies to Understand and Tackle the Big and Complex Sustainability Challenges of Our Generation’ (editors Andre Nijhof van Nijenrode University en Lucas Simons).
Contribution to Green Chemistry Conference, Berlijn (2018). Systems approach to identify sustainable chemical innovations that encompass life-cycle impacts
BIO
Because of a strong sense of idealism, I started my career in sustainability. In the Master’s program ‘policy, communication and organization’ at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam I learned about the sociology of organizations. Even in our modern societies, people long to belong to a tribe, where you can contribute meaningfully. How do you support that, in large companies that are focused on the bottom line, and on creating shareholder value?
I graduated on the subject of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Because of the innovative power of the business sector, I was convinced that businesses have a pivotal role to play in the transition to sustainability. Therefore, subsequently I attained an MBA in sustainable management at the Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco. As a sustainability consultant I developed and implemented sustainability programs at international corporations, mainly in the chemical sector.
Because of the turbulence in society, I took a different path in the last couple of years. Although in my personal interpretation sustainability still is about ethical and responsible business, I increasingly had questions about the broader agenda and its shadow side. For example, wind energy is so damaging to the environment and people’s health – by our own definitions, can we honestly call this renewable? How realistic is the energy transition as it is currently pursued? Why are scientists with serious credentials cancelled instead of heard when they critique climate models? Within the sustainability sector, there was no space for raising these issues.
Additionally, the quest for sustainability raised deeper questions for me: what does sustainability mean when seen in the context of processes of globalization and the geopolitical context that has arisen after WWII? What is the basis of a thriving society, or a functioning democracy? How do you guard the human measure in largers organisational structures?
Different independent new media platforms, such as the Andere Krant, the Solari Report and the Clintel Foundation provided me the opportunity to explore these questions fully and freely.
Though conducting research was worthwhile, it does not fully suit me. Research is a time consuming and solitary process. I miss action, and interaction. My purpose was always that knowledge should be actionable. How can we nurture a culture that can sustain
references
“Elze is wonderfully brilliant. From brainstorming ideas to tactical execution, she delivers only the highest quality of work. She brings a lot of expertise and dives deeply into new topics and quickly masters them. She’s also a delight to work with. Working with her raised my standards for what is possible for a team to achieve.”– Carrie Staller. Business Development Director, Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI)
“Elze is able to dig into opportunity and reshape it in an engaging way for multiple audiences. I supervised her work with a firm to identify a way to start using sustainability as a catalyst for change with employees and customers. She brings a very systemic view to the development of unique strategies.”– Cynthia Scott. Ph.D. Core Faculty, Presidio Graduate School.
blog
Book Review: One Idea to Rule Them All by Michelle Stiles
By Elze van Hamelen Written for the The Solari Report – May 27, 2025 How is it that so many educated, intelligent people fall for
Solari hero of the week
Hero of the Week: January 20, 2025: Elze van Hamelen January 20, 2025 “To make our civilization last for another 100 or even 1000 years,