Find purpose and overcome self-doubt with Veroniek Vermeulen

On a mission to create an equitable workplace for women, Veroniek Vermeulen has led a career breaking through barriers to help women feel accepted, trusted and valued in the workplace.  

As a trained engineer with over 17 years of experience in global marketing, Veroniek spent the last 10 years immersing herself in the world of meditation and coaching. 

She is an ICF-certified coach and lived in different monasteries to reconnect with herself and live according to her true purpose. Now, she is the Founder of Silatha, where she helps women overcome taboo barriers, such as menopause, fertility and PMS, to help them thrive. 

We caught up with Veroniek to hear more about her journey. 

What inspired you to launch Silatha?

It all started in 2012, when I took time out from my career in senior corporate management, for a meditation retreat in Nepal. In my daily life, I was always chasing something or I felt that I had to achieve even more to feel happy. Life was leading me and I wanted to lead my life consciously.

In the Himalayas, I had a life-changing realisation. I felt what it meant to be in the present moment. By contrast, our modern lifestyles are busy and preoccupied, we spend half of our time thinking about the past or future, rather than being in the moment.

I understood how meditation enables consciousness and peace of mind and this motivated me to transform the way I live my life. In our modern Western lives, there is always more to desire and this is, by nature, deeply unfulfilling. Meditation offers an alternative, to connect inwards. It allows us to nurture our own inner qualities and strengths for long-term pleasure and true fulfilment.

I continued my learning while living in monasteries in Vietnam, Japan and Myanmar. At the same time I was seeing what happened in the workplace that is created by men for men, I realised women are not using their full potential. I noticed that diverse teams with women make organisations more innovative, productive, and collaborative while increasing profitability by 15%. I decided to support enterprises that believe they can be more successful when creating an empowering and inclusive environment for women so that everyone can flourish.

How does Silatha support women going through various different life challenges?

For women to unleash their full potential there are certain conditions that need to be established, for them to feel accepted, trusted and valued so they can truly thrive.

We believe that companies that invest in creating these environments, will be the most sustainably successful.

As part of creating a thriving environment, companies need to address the taboo topics of:

• Hormonal realities (menopause, PMS, pregnancy, etc)
• Multiple caregiving roles
• Managing biases

At Silatha we help companies create environments where these realities are understood and specific tools are offered, to help manage these realities.

We believe this is part of a healthy company’s cultural transformation to fully diverse and thriving teams.

Silatha is the only holistic approach focused on the specific women’s life cycles and the taboos around women's mental wellbeing in these periods in life. 

Our pioneering programme is designed to help forward-thinking companies, that care about their women and are passionate about attracting and retaining talent. Our systematic approach to workplace wellbeing ensures you maximise effectiveness.

Silatha’s Culture Change Programme is designed to:

• Drive awareness and openness of realities women face
• Build coping and behaviour-change strategies for the women affected
• Build focused mentoring skills
• Work in sync with the natural inclinations of women

What’s the greatest benefit of Silatha?

It changes the lives of our users. Hearing how our programme changes lives, makes our clients feel less alone, understood and appreciated. Hearing how they dare to speak up now, how they dare to truly be themselves instead of mimicking an identity that’s not reflecting them, is the most rewarding. 

What advice would you give to women who have the tendency to self-sabotage? 

What would you tell a friend if she was you? What would you admire in her? Now tell this to yourself. We are often way tougher on ourselves than on others. Also through meditation, we can calm down and reconnect to our core, see things more clearly and with more belief in ourselves. I’d also recommend taking a coach who can support you through tough times and can remind you of the brilliant things you already accomplished. 

What would you say has been the secret to your success?

Meditation helped me to change my life: to live according to what my heart is telling me. As an engineer, I have the tendency to always use ratio, though intuitively I’m very strong. I let go of the voice in my head who tells me stories about what other people would think or say – but it’s irrelevant. 

What matters is what I believe and that I act with respect to others and through open and honest discussions with the people I love, care and trust. My determination and drive have helped me to continue when things are tough and succeed business-wise.