Sophie de Goede

Everybody has a Story. Mine consists of three building blocks: my passion for food, my love for flowers, edge and beauty, and my professional identity.

My passion for food developed early. I was five years old when I for the first time made my mother dinner. She was held up by work and I was hungry. By the time she was finished for the day, I had prepared dinner and had left the kitchen in total disarray. From that point on cooking has been a great passion. Today, I lean on the skills I retain from those early years cooking with my mother when preparing food for family and friends.

My love for flowers, edge and beauty was also formed in those early years. Art and design I see as the ultimate expression of personality. And best of all, art, and beauty, is in the eye of the beholder! It is through the application and use of our own definition hereof that we can make a space a home, a trend a brand, a company a success. It is in this I find my inspiration, within which I base my creativity.

My professional identity has developed over time, and it has taken me a variety of roles, positions and responsibilities to be able to reach a form of certainty around the skillset I possess. Through out my career, I have always believed in, and strived towards, discovering common ground, stirring collective action and building communities around a bigger purpose. Important to me is that I believe in the narrative of the company I work for.

I believe in co-creating concepts and propositions, and designing arrangements and mechanisms that work in the long run. Short term gains should not be your guiding star. Discussing the needs of an Offshore Supervisor, Electrical Engineer or interface colleague with a starting point in something largely technical, translating that into working and understandable project, commercial and contractual solutions by example requires creativity and an open mind, succinct, correct, and effective croos-organisation communication, problem solving and active stakeholder management. Foremost, it requires the ability to write stories, tell them, and execute them. As Shakespeare ones wrote: “All of the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players […].” It is up to us as single individuals, in collective collaboration, to define how the stage, players, and story evolves. And where I fit into this? My part? Contributing to the narrative of a company inspiring people to perform, and creating conditions so that they can excel in their job.