Nienke’s life taught her to live from Phoenix Mastery. Her path wasn’t smooth. Life taught her that there is always a way up and that all bumps are stepping stones. By choice.
Bouncing back is resilience in hitting the same wall over and over again. Until you learn to take the next step:
Master your Phoenixing, that’s a verb. An being and doing from what works, without denying nor suppressing what shows up.
It’s the creative approach of rising, because you can always do so!
Phoenix Mastery and the next steps.
Phoenix Mastery
Phoenix Mastery came as a BV (LtD) alive on May 21st 2026. While the presentation Master had all the elements of authentic speaking, most of the business came from the outer performance. After the TEDx experience in Italy, it became obvious to Nienke: this was not her path anymore, her future. Loyalty to the licenses made it difficult to fully let go. Until the Indigo Elephant knocked on her door and entered her heart. No longer solopreneurship but collaboration based on shared commitment.
The heartfelt connection that was left was the Phoenix Frequencies podcast. Nienke put her heart and soul into these frequencies. And there was more.
With input on how to rise from adversity, illness, setbacks, and misalignment, the graduate Master within CCZW, her experiences in the boardroom, and her deep wisdom from the heart made the rise and upliftment obvious and accessible to others, too. That’s where Phoenix Mastery and The Indigo Elephant meet.
Experience-based professional
In September 2025, Nienke started her graduate Master’s in Experience-based Professional at the CCZW in the Netherlands.
The choice was twofold: first, to integrate her experience and have the certification approved under Dutch law.
Second, to take the opportunity to create more roots and connections in her home country.
This choice evoked two other directions. To rise from the individual to the boardroom level to change the perspective around prevention, sick leave, and drop-outs. She committed to laying the foundation for the Indigo Elephant consultancy as a triangle with Elsbeth van Lienden and Mario Hanaca.
Tapping into human intelligence in an AI, industrial and economically driven, organisationally structured world.
Field Intelligence gives words to the invisible, activates the field, and lets flow what’s stuck — so organisations truly renew.
We are here for leaders, entrepreneurs and pioneers who know that things can be different and wonder how.
We help you disconnect from organisational systems rooted in fear and control
and rebuild them into systems where humans embrace their full capacity and infinite possibilities.
Alignment
As Nienke wrote for her founder story section, you can read: sometimes it takes a while, and then suddenly, all clicks together.
My life has prepared me for this.
Collaboration
After the Phoenix Mastery BV was founded, the collaboration with Elsbeth van Lienden and Mario Hanaca intensified and on June 21 2026, The Indigo Elephant came into this world. We share decades of business and mentoring experience in all areas. We share the legacy and stewardship principle for leaders.
After years of being a solopreneur, it is time to flourish together in serving humanity. You can read more about the Indigo Elephant here.
Three experienced business leaders. Decades of internal work. One shared question.
How can we support leaders to build a business and a society that works for everybody?
Where it started: Nurse and management
Nienke began her career as a nurse in healthcare. Notably, patients in transition, from life to death, were the area where Nienke served at her highest level of reach at that time. Being at service when babies were born and later as a hospice nurse, Nienke was creating a safe space for whatever was happening from life to death.
Over the next decade of her life, she held leadership positions and developed listening and action skills to lead organisations. Her capacity to ‘tune in’ to what was needed was functional, but, in the end, no longer aligned with her life’s purpose. Even her BA degree and shifting organisations weren’t of any help—only a stepping stone.
Entrepreneurship, mentor, trainer, writer
Finally, it occurred to Nienke that entrepreneurship was a better fit in that decade.
Life showed it was time to give voice to what really matters—supporting people in finding their voice and helping them express themselves. As a result, her company, Presentation-Master, was born.
She expressed her voice through the publication of several books, including The Speaker Success Solution and the E.A.S.E. method, which support public speaking. Speaking Leaders (Dutch) and her personal journey in life in the book My Life with Emma, Moving Mountains in Silence. A tribute to her grandmother, Emma.
And life evolved, so after another decade, it was time to shift again:
Nienke concluded her public speaking career with a TED talk, which was also selected for publication on the official TED platform. It took a while, but on May 21 2026, Nienke closed her company, Presentation-Master and handed the legacy over to Marlou Bullens.
Heart-based Living and Phoenix Frequencies
In 2021, it was time to move on again. Nienke is faced with a life-or-death experience. That was the wake-up call that led her to drastically change the direction of her life, to the point of no return. As she described on her podcast, the Phoenix Frequencies, it felt like: if life is given back to me, I’d better make the most of it!
Living a heart-smart life in collaboration with HeartAmbassadors, HeartMath Institute, and the Fyera Foundation.
Her TBI helped her to listen beyond what was said. To sense what is needed in the next level.
Life prepared her for what life is now. It is time to work with what people can pick up from her now. The Phoenix Frequencies podcast expresses that, to start with, into the world.
Her personal mentoring for those who are ready to do the work is also a natural result.
Inner wisdom to outer impact requires Phoenix Mastery!
Peacebuilding
Besides being a heart-ambassador, Nienke takes a stand for Peace. As a member of the Rotary e-club of World Peace, she is connected with the international field of peacebuilders.
Nienke was born in 1967, a mile from the International Peace Palace in The Hague, the Netherlands. However, it took 50 years before she felt ready to contribute to peace through programs in listening, heart-based connections, and communication skills. In her 2022 program, “Building Bridges – Connecting Worlds,” she took her first global steps toward bringing peace by building bridges. She developed programs for youth, women, and men to create social change and facilitated conferences and other programs.
She also interviewed peacebuilders such as Dr Scilla Elworthy, Dr Betty Uribe, Sheva Carr, and Jo Berry, and contributed to several podcasts for the Geneva Peace Week.
Daeyoung Kim invited her to visit Korea in October 2024. This 2-week bridging of East and West opened her heart even further to Korean culture and people, particularly the Silsangsa Indramang Sengmyeong community in the South Korean Jiri mountains.
