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Womens History Month: Elise Pietersen
Date created
March 30, 2022
Last updated:
May 6, 2025
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5 min read
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Our Customer Success Manager Elise Pietersen gives an insight into her career and role
At Lepaya we really want to take the time to appreciate our female colleagues. This month each week, we share a small glimpse into the day-to-day of our colleagues to celebrate their personal and career achievements. We started the month off with an interview with Sara Shehata, talking about her role within the tech team. This month we’ve spoken to Head of Operations Geraldine Schepers, and Office & People Manager Caitlin Vorstman.
This week in the spotlight our Customer Success Manager – Elise Pietersen:
“It surprises people when I tell them that as a child I was extremely shy.
To the point that I hardly talked to anyone in primary school. I got less shy in high school and gradually grew out of my shyness in university. However, part of that shyness stayed with me until I found myself in a corporate job, as a coach in a customer services department of a large Global Corporate Insurance company, and found a mentor and incredibly strong female role model.
I was 28 and stuck in my career. I was proud of what I achieved so far but did not really know what direction to take my career in. I had always had an interest in people development and L&D but had no prior experience, or degree in that field. I did know that I found our head of L&D, Sarah, extremely inspiring. Having seen her deliver training to large groups of people, manage leadership days for the MT and speak up on calls with hundreds of people, I knew she would be an incredible leader and role model to learn from. I reached out to her, we talked and she gave me some jobs to do alongside my role as a coach, to see if I would be a good fit and would like the L&D field. She pushed me to sign up for an internal awards & recognition workgroup, something completely out of my comfort zone. And when a job opened in her team I applied and got offered the position.
My job as a trainer and L&D professional was a steep learning curve, having to leave behind the super-shy child and move into the ‘I got this’ headspace. Because believing in yourself is not always easy, especially when you work in a very corporate environment with a male-dominated leadership community. However, having someone else that believes in you, and tells you that they believe in you can work wonders. Sarah supported me every step of the way and was the mentor I was looking for, encouraging me to speak up and be heard whenever I had new ideas or when I disagreed with what was put in front of me. She inspired me to be disruptive when needed but also to always listen to what other people have to say. She introduced me to other female leaders in our company and helped me to create a network of strong and independent women around me. But most importantly she inspired me to be authentically myself. That you do not need to fit into a certain box to be successful and should never be made to feel that you do not belong in a certain job or company, because you are a woman or because you refuse to conform to archaic corporate traditions.
When I left the company to move back to The Netherlands, I knew she had given me incredible skillset and mindset that would support me wherever I ended up. And I was very lucky to end up at Lepaya, where I get to work daily with other inspirational women, who are outspoken and full of incredible ideas. And I feel that Lepaya as a company treasures and fosters a community that allows women to thrive just as much as men. Having Sarah’s incredible bravery and power as a woman in the back of my mind at all times, I am now hoping that I will be able to inspire other women to believe in themselves and question everything that they don’t feel is right.”
Interested in our view on equality, D&I, and what we do?
Start with our page on Diversity and Inclusion at Lepaya
Check out the D&I page
and check out our Power Skill: Diversity and Inclusion
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Jeroen Kraaijenbrink: How organizations can overcome the honesty gap
Senior leadership and boardroom teams invest heavily in commercial strategies to win market shares. Yet the most important and honest information driving strategy circulates in teams underneath, never making it to the table where decisions are made.Jeroen Kraaijenbrink, Executive Coach and Strategy Consultant at Kraaijenbrink Advisory, has spent years working on what he calls the honesty gap. We sat down with him to understand what the honesty gap actually is, where it lives in organizations, and why fixing it requires a leadership shift.How do you define the honesty gap?There's a narrow definition and a broad one. The broad one is: we have created organizations and systems where it's barely possible to be honest to yourself, about yourself, and honest to other people.Honesty isn't just lying. It's integrity, being authentically connected to other people and being aware of your own emotions and your own biases.The honesty gap, in a narrow sense, is the fact that truth and information don’t travel vertically upwards in a company. It's often hard to speak openly to your manager because it’s become rational not to. Many people have the experience: 'I've tried it once but then I was punished for it, or was ignored, so let it be, never mind.' That's the fascinating part: it's not good for people, it's not good for organizations and yet we somehow keep this system intact.Is it less about individual dishonesty and more about a collective culture?A lot of the most important information going through your company is between people and in conversations. You need to find a way to have an honest conversation, where the things that matter get on the meeting table, not just in the informal circuit. 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But most people don't feel very comfortable in that kind of role because it's not who they are.Can you fix the honesty gap through individual coaching alone or does the system have to change?Part of it is a personal change, part of it is a system change. You can be on your own and be very authentic, but if the system doesn't change at all, you’ll struggle to break the honesty gap.What you need to do is work on the people, the culture, and the system. Ideally that has to include the top, because otherwise it stays at the level of the person being coached. If it's a team lead or a mid-manager, that person can partly create an island in the organization, a safe space for their team and their department. But still, the appraisal systems, objectives, and culture are company-wide. Why is this so hard to shift, even when leaders recognize the problem?We have normalized this idea that you have to be strategic in what you tell and what you show. You have to show up in a certain role at work. 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