SOS: A Navigation Guide for Women at Work

SOS: A Navigation Guide for Women at Work is an accessible and practical guide for women and men to improve gender equality, embrace diversity and rewrite the unwritten rules of the workplace.

This transformative handbook addresses common challenges faced by women, including productivity, parenting, the pay gap—and, of course, guilt. These multifaceted issues need multifaceted solutions, so each topic is addressed through the SOS framework: 

Self: what can you do yourself

Others: how can others help you and how can you help others, and

System: how the system and the (unwritten) rules should change—and what you can do to support this change.

SOS is a call to women and their allies, encouraging them to be the architects of change in their professional environments. 

Trained as a lawyer, Chantal Korteweg feels strongly about social justice. She is a strategic executor and contributes to making our world a better and more inclusive, sustainable place. She has become an all-around professional as an attorney-at-law and a development banker, and now she is the Director for Inclusive Banking at the Dutch bank ABN AMRO. 

Chantal grew up in England and the Netherlands, sparking her love for travel and culture and her interest in different perspectives. She enjoys getting the best out of herself and others, and she always wants to learn. She initiated the Fempower Your Growth program, a Dutch Financial Sector initiative, connecting the worlds of bankers and female entrepreneurs. She pays it forward by being a mentor and an advisory board member. She has been appointed as the Women’s Representative for the Netherlands in 2023, and she will provide a statement to the UN General Assembly in 2023 about financial inequality between women and men and the importance of financial independence of women.

Chantal lives in Leiden, the Netherlands, with her 11-year-old son, 9-year-old daughter, and 3-year-old dog.

Marijn Wiersma is a corporate anthropologist and the founder of Incredible Impact, a company founded to unlock the potential of female entrepreneurs and leaders in service of a better world. Currently, she works as the Director of Partnership and Innovation at the 2X Collaborative. She is the co-author of the book Banking for a Better World and an expert on diversity and financial inclusion. As a visionary, multi-linguist, and free thinker, she is creative, curious, and innovative. 

Marjin founded Zambia’s first private nursing school. She is an ESG and gender expert and an executive coach. A lover of storytelling, she organized TEDxLeiden and various Future of Finance events, facilitated female leadership programs, and has made a docuseries on female role models in the financial sector. Her twenty-plus years of sustainable development experience led her to Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Europe. 

Marijn has lived on three continents, worked in more than 35 countries, and is a mother of four. She currently resides in the Netherlands.

Tessel van Willigen is a management trainee at Hieroo Amsterdam, where she works on social projects to create positive impact in the region. She has a master’s degree in Human Geography and is specialist in International Development Studies. 

Tessel interned for Incredible Impact, a company founded with the aim to unlock the potential of female entrepreneurs and female leaders in service of a better world. As part of her bachelor’s degree, Tessel studied for one semester at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. There she found her strength as a connector: bringing together different cultures, disciplines, and points of view to make a positive difference. 

Tessel couples her strong analytical mind with an enthusiastic and hands-on mentality to create positive impact. Tessel is continuously in search of new insights, has a passion to learn, and does not shy away from challenging situations. She lives in Amsterdam with three friends.

Lidewij Wiersma is a veterinarian with a penchant for collecting academic titles: She has a bachelor’s degree in immunology and virology, a veterinary degree, and a PhD in emerging respiratory zoonoses, and she’s also a board-certified veterinary specialist in pathology. She is a serial-CEO, first of the European Board of Veterinary Specialization (EBVS) and now of Veterinary Continuous Education in Europe (VetCEE). She has also worked as a consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations since 2016.

Lidewij feels strongly about contributing to the current wave of feminism. Although she has been offered leadership opportunities, she has turned them down to date, awaiting meaningful change in our workplace culture—and doing her part to inspire that change. 

Lidewij has lived in nine countries on three continents, and she has finally settled in Italy. She lives on five hectares of land in the countryside just north of Rome, with her Italian husband and their two sons, two horses, two goats, a cow, a pig, a dog, and a herd of 60 olive trees.