Francois Rijk

Francois has dedicated his career to serving clients as a consultant, facilitator and executive coach.  Following his doctoral degree in Business Econometrics, his initial area of focus was urban public transportation planning.  After also receiving an MBA, he focused on strategy in a consulting role with McKinsey.  This included a Finance role with HP,  and Financial Consulting with Coopers & Lybrand.

During his management consulting years in strategy and finance, he served clients in many different countries, while building deep cross-cultural and global expertise.  He speaks Dutch, English, French, and German.  His consulting work increasingly focused on change management, helping large multi-nationals navigate disruptive change driven by new technology or M&A.  He worked for several large European firms, and then with Price Waterhouse Coopers in the US.

Francois was continually sought after by clients and colleagues as a facilitator, coach, and designer of development programs.  As his passion grew to more directly support the individual leader, he founded Rijk Consulting in the US and The Netherlands in 2001.  He has since focused exclusively on helping his global clients develop their leaders while driving large-scale change, and taking on increasingly challenging group and individual coaching assignments with executives and senior leaders.

A few of his clients include Achmea, Baxter, BP, BNP Paribas, CSL-Behring, Enterprise, Ford, Freightliner, Lafarge, Liberty Global, Novartis, and Watlow. He has also been a consulting partner with Carewan,  Conversant, Oliver Wyman, and Mercer Leadership Development.  He met Doug Brockbank of Leadership Frontiers LLC over a decade ago, and has partnered on enterprise leadership development initiatives numerous times since.

Francois’ goal is to help managers and leaders discover their strengths and inner drivers, and apply them more effectively in their daily interactions and decisions.  He maintains a keen interest in breaking down barriers from differences in culture, education, functional bias and personality, helping leaders make the most of this diversity.

Francois currently resides in Amsterdam, yet also spends significant time with clients in the US.