Vréneli Stadelmaier
About the Author
Vréneli Stadelmaier is a European author, entrepreneur, and certified coach with a background in business and leadership. Born in the Netherlands, she spent most of her professional life working across the Netherlands and Belgium. She is also a wife, mother, mountaineer, and amateur boxer — a woman of many talents and passions.
Vréneli holds a degree in Business Administration from the University of Groningen. Her career began in corporate management and evolved into leadership roles in both the private and public sectors. Driven by her long-standing commitment to women’s rights and workplace equality, she later trained as a coach, specialising in female leadership and career development.
She is the founder of several women’s networks and, in 2007, launched SheConsult, a successful coaching and consultancy firm focused on empowering highly educated women. With over 20 locations across the Netherlands and Belgium, SheConsult coached thousands of women and supported numerous organisations with workshops, training, and strategic advice. As a certified coach, Vréneli has personally guided hundreds of women through professional transitions.
In 2014, she published her first book, Fck die Onzekerheid*, which became a bestseller in the Netherlands and Belgium and has since reached its 15th edition. The English translation, titled Sure She Can, was released internationally. Three years later, she published Een Slimme Meid is op haar Toekomst Voorbereid, a practical guide for young women entering the workforce and navigating the early stages of their careers.
Vréneli has been featured in numerous magazines and has appeared regularly on Dutch and Belgian television and radio. She is a sought-after keynote speaker for corporate women’s networks and performed over 500 times in theatres with her signature “theatre lecture” format — a dynamic blend of storytelling, coaching, and performance.
After selling her business in 2023, Vréneli relocated to sunny southern Spain, where she now runs a small, exclusive boutique hotel in the mountains.
Women from around the world travel there to join her for her retreat program, Walk & Talk — combining hiking, coaching, and deep personal reflection under the Andalusian sun.Vréneli is multilingual and speaks English, German, Spanish, French, and her native language, Dutch.
Holding your own in a masculine working environment
After I finished my studies, I held management positions with a large international publisher, an insurance company, and a home-care organization. My adventure in entrepreneurship began in 1995, as co-founder of an executive search agency in the financial sector.
Both during my studies and in the companies I worked for, I was often one of the few ambitious women there. That surprised me even back then.
I usually worked with male colleagues/managers. I had to discover and learn in practice that, to be able to hold your own and to grow, you have to learn to understand the game within that masculine culture and to play along.
Ouch! Mistakes
But I did not always get it right. I sometimes wrestled with insecurity. Now and again, I felt lonely in my position. I struggled with the balance between my ambition and the situation at home. I was asked to become a director when I was 32. And I was angry with myself for not grabbing that chance at the time. Now I know that I made the wrong choices back then. But I ran into barriers, not least into the barriers within myself.
And around me, I saw girlfriends with a good education struggling with those same problems as well.
And then I saw the light. A new ambition emerged. I wanted to investigate the causes and effects of my behaviour and my feelings. I wanted to learn. So I went back to school. For years after that, I took various coaching courses and countless additional courses and workshops. I wanted to help women like myself. Because if I had had a coach at the time, who had been able to show me the way and who had given me a kick in the behind every now and then, things would have definitely turned out differently.
Coaching throughout the Netherlands & Belgium
So I started SheConsult, a coaching and training agency for highly-educated women. I have worked together with more than 22 top coaching colleagues. All of them have a university education and are mothers. That was my starting point. You have to work from knowledge, skills, and be able to feel the experience, in particular.
Through all those hundreds of coaching sessions, with all those different women, I discovered the common denominator that bothers us so frequently: insecurity.
So that’s what this book is for. For you and for all other daughters in the world.