Coaching with perspective
Helping leaders face what goes unspoken, align human dynamics with bold strategy, and leave legacies that last.
I have lived many lives. Boardrooms and family off-sites. Corporate jets and dusty farm roads. I have negotiated cross-border mergers and navigated the dinner table with five kids under ten. If there is one thing I have learned from a life stretched across continents and contradictions, it is this: What breaks teams, families, friendships, and legacies is not a lack of intelligence. It is what goes unspoken.
I started my career as an international tax lawyer, young, driven, and curious, working in the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Curaçao. I chased complexity, maybe because I was good at it, or maybe because I thought mastering systems would help me make sense of people.
Over time, I stepped into senior executive leadership roles as CEO, Managing Director, and Chairman for global Fortune 500 and market-leading enterprises. I led multi-country expansions, opening markets for a German brewery across Latin America, and scaled an Argentine family’s commodities business from its Geneva headquarters. I also led large, multi-country teams of bankers worldwide, directing wealth strategies for ultra-high-net-worth clients at UBS and Deutsche Bank. My last corporate role was with Citibank in New York, where I headed governance for family businesses across Latin America, shaping strategy at the intersection of global finance and generational legacy.
It looked like success. And in many ways, it was. But somewhere along the way, I started to notice the undercurrents: tension behind smiles, decisions avoided, trust quietly eroding behind perfect reports. Succession plans stalled by fear. Boardroom silence covering deep insecurity. Partnerships drifting, steered more by pride than by principle.
That is when I realized my real work was not in managing systems. It was in helping people face what they were not saying.
I stepped out of the executive suite and into coaching. Not as a pivot, but as a homecoming. Today, I work with:
Across all of it runs one thread: the courage to speak what matters, even when it is hard.
I am also working on a project that excites a different part of me: helping build a green hydrogen supply chain between South America and Europe. It is a way of linking decarbonization with local opportunity. And for me, it is one more form of legacy work.
With a law degree from the University of Amsterdam and an MBA from the University of Chicago, where I also served as a Distinguished-Executive-in-Residence, I bring both analytical rigor and real-world leadership experience to my work. As an ICF Master Certified Coach, I teach leadership coaching at Rutgers, North Carolina State, and American University. I am also certified in team coaching and sport psychology, and serve as Vice-Chairman on the International Coaching Federation’s Global Board of Coaching Education.
My first book, The Elephant in the Family Room, explores the emotional forces that shape business families and the quiet courage it takes to face them. It is the book I wish I had when I was still in the room, sensing the tension but not yet knowing how to name it. My second book, Invisible Capital: What Sustains Enterprising Families Across Generations, is out now.
Since 2012, I have served as the Honorary Consul General of the Netherlands in Uruguay, a ceremonial role recently renewed by the King, though most of what it taught me came not from titles, but from long hours learning how culture, timing, and trust shape human connection.
Today, I live in Uruguay with my soulmate and our five children. My days are full of coaching, writing, sailing, flying, sport, and cooking Indonesian rice tables for friends. My life has never been linear, and very little was handed to me. But I have followed my heart through every chapter, not because it was easy, but because it mattered.
René Sonneveld
2025
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