Hi, my name is Maartje. It means Little Warrior and Pearl (an organic “stone” that stands for: Love, peace, warmth, connection, transformation, wisdom and acceptance). It is my passion to help people become healthier (physically and mentally) and to connect more with nature and with their feelings. My dream is to travel, write and make art. As a coach, traveler and artist I hope to inspire people and touch their heart to commit to their dreams, to what they love in the world. With words and with art, with text and with paint, with jokes and with images.
Maartje Zaal is a curious pioneer and chaingemaker with vision and perseverance. As an interdisciplinary generalist, she knows how to connect many topics and developments. She brings insight into complexity. Striving for a resilient and connected society, she uses her creativity to create beautiful projects and to inspire people. For example, by organizing events, giving workshops or helping people as a (hiking) coach.
She likes to be dropped into a challenging (new) situation, she investigates it from all sides and develops supported win-win solutions together with her team. Her strength is to listen to the specific context and needs of people. Together with those insights, a positive attitude, a lot of flexibility and a touch of magic, she delivers inspiring work. She makes complex processes and subjects manageable and even fun. Where others see chaos, Maartje brings structure by visualizing (storyboards), describing (eg. a process descriptions and blogs) or experiencing (workshops) complixities. She brings joy, peace, connection and understanding, but also likes to tickle and challenge.
Background
She has a bachelor’s degree in European Public Health with a minor in Sustainable Agriculture. In addition, she has a master’s degree in “society, science and technology”, and a specialization in “sustainability, innovation and governance”. She can be described most briefly as a human ecologist. She has conducted research into the bioeconomy, the emergence of organic farming, democracy and ethics in relation to technological and scientific developments, the developments of and around the menstrual cup, economy and sustainability, Bahai, “nutritional yield”, health effects of children/ urban farms, behavioral changes for a healthy and sustainable lifestyle and developments in diets of Europeans since the Second World War.
Furthermore, she is a coach for Climate Conversations. And she participated in the three days Integrated Systems Thinking course of Except.
Also, she was an active part of Chaingemakers for a year and worked on a food forestry and tiny house building site for half a year. Currently, she is Project Manager of the Green Office Movement.
Besides her “professional” background, she has participated in several dance classes (mainly contemporary dance, but also some beginner classes in modern, hiphop, salsa etc.). She loves to paint and draw. Also, she writes poetry and very short stories now and then.
