The real story of how Zen & Go started: a lunch break nobody asked for, a CEO's office, and one evening phone call that made the decision for me.
I want to tell you the actual story of how Zen & Go started. Not the tidy version. The real one.
Before Siemens Healthineers, I'd worked at Philips, and at adidas. And in both places, I kept noticing the same thing, over and over: I had almost no role models for how to actually be at work. People got interrupted mid-sentence in every meeting. Nobody seemed to really know what to do with their own emotions, let alone anyone else's. There was so much tension everywhere, and, if I'm honest, sometimes not even particularly good behaviour underneath it. Not all the time, but more often then not.
And then I noticed the exact same thing happening in myself.
It got physical. I developed genuinely bad sleep problems, whole nights of just lying there, unable to sleep. Exhausted, but wired inside, this racing carousel of thoughts that wouldn't stop. I was so far from my own authentic self it's almost funny to say out loud now.
So I started a yoga and meditation practice. Mostly just to fix my sleep, honestly. And it worked, fast. But it also gave me something I hadn't asked for: I felt like myself again. More centered. More able to actually want to move things, instead of just enduring them. And I noticed I got along with people so much better, simply because I wasn't so reactive anymore. I also realized: instead of complaining or fighting against something ("everybody is so stressed"), I could be change maker in this ("how can I support people in navigating stress better?").
January 2018: Start of the "Mindful Break"
So I looked around Siemens Healthineers and thought: how is there genuinely nothing here for this? And I did the obvious thing. I sent a lunch-break invite for stress management and relaxation to my own department. Called it "Mindful Break." About 30 people.
I remember sending that invite and being so nervous about the reaction that I basically ran off to lunch the second I hit send.
A few people came anyway. (Fun fact: the day of the first Mindful Break was the first and last time ever in my corporate life that I forgot to put on a bra. I realized mid-session and got sooooo embarrassed. 😆)
And here's the part I still can't quite get over: I never actively forwarded that invite again. Not once. By the time I eventually left the company, that same calendar invite had grown, completely on its own, just people forwarding it to each other, to 800, 900 people.
Rather ask for forgiveness than for permission
That was basically my entire mode during this whole period. As the mindfulness movement grew, I needed a bigger room, so I talked to facilities. I talked to HR. I talked to the workers' council. I talked to performance management. I talked to, genuinely, anyone who would sit with me for ten minutes. I got invited to internal events to speak about mindfulness, and I just kept saying yes without waiting for anyone to tell me I was allowed to.
I was on fire, as I realized: THIS is what I'm here for.
And it became something like wildfire. Every second Wednesday, 12:00 to 12:30. 40+ people per session. A waitlist. Eventually a real Wellbeing Room in the new headquarters, and even that room stopped being big enough. People were literally queuing outside it before the session started, because we simply couldn't fit everyone in anymore.
I remember seeing that line for the first time and thinking: oh my god. We actually have to do something about this, don't we.
I ran a little survey to capture the results. They were soooo good. I got featured internally.
And at some point, standing in front of that same lunch group again, I said: "we need to actually do something bigger with this."
Someone in the room said, half-joking: "why don't you just go up to the CEO?"
I remember thinking, right after that session ended: fuck it, I'm doing this now. And I walked straight up to his office. That same afternoon. Fascinating to see how much it motivates me if I can stand up for other people's needs.
And then, by total coincidence, it turned out his assistant had been in that very lunch session. She'd already been thinking the same thing I was (and, by the way, she was also one of the "angels" that empowered me to believe in my vision going forward). That's genuinely how the meeting happened at all, first with the Head of Board Management, and later, with the CEO himself.
For the meetings, I spent weekends and after hours writing a business case, collecting feedback, refining it (think v2-v203456). Sleepless nights, but energy so high.
The CEO meeting with the sound bowl
Here's the detail I still find funniest about myself. I brought two things into the CEO meeting with me: a printed copy of the business case. And a small sound bowl. A Klangspiel.
A sound bowl? This is, looking back, completely unhinged for a meeting like that. Way too esoteric for the room. But I brought it anyway, because people always respond well to it, and some part of me genuinely thought it might help him relax a bit. I have always been a bit too focused on making everyone around me happy. 😆
The meeting itself was warm. Kind. More human than I expected. At one point we were sitting there, editing the document together, right in his office. I still don't actually know if the sound bowl convinced anyone of anything. But I remember that conversation and him fondly, and it opened real doors: an associate to work with, and months of continued conversations with the Head of Board Management.
I didn't just want a structured mindfulness programme to exist, by the way. I wrote myself into the business case. I wanted the job as "Global mindfulness manager", just like SAP had had it for years (huge shoutout to Peter Bostelmann who also supported me dearly in this time).
It got more serious
What came next was months of meetings with genuinely senior, genuinely kind people across the company, Head of HR and others. Everyone loved the idea. Everyone loved the business case.
Nobody could find the budget for it. I got passed, gently, from department to department.
All of this was happening alongside my actual day job, by the way. I became, unofficially, the "Head of Mindfulness" at Siemens Healthineers, with none of the title, none of the budget, none of the bandwidth that should come with that. I burned out doing it. And I couldn't leave, because some part of me kept holding on to the hope that this role would still come through, that I'd get to stay and do this for a living, right there.
Bali, and where the name Zen & Go actually came from
Somewhere in the middle of all this, I took a two-month sabbatical. Needed to process al of this. Went to Bali. I've always found that being there puts me around people who are genuinely open-minded, mentally flexible in a way that's contagious. And that's where the first real ideas for my own thing started forming.
I wrote out a list of possible names. And then I just walked up to people, over and over, and asked: which one do you like best? Zen & Go kept winning. I fell for it too, honestly, because it held both halves of what I actually wanted to build: Zen, the invitation to center yourself, to actually feel into what's true. And Go, taking that centeredness back out into the world, and actually moving something with it.
The phone call
Then, one evening, months after I'd come back, my phone rang. It was the Head of Health Management at the time, someone who had genuinely believed in this, who had helped concretize it into a two-to-three-year pilot plan. Probably the most influential person in all of this, because he saw my vision and believed in me. But on the call, he said: we didn't get the budget.
And I knew, right there, in that one sentence: okay. Then I'm leaving.
What I want to say clearly here, because it matters to me: he didn't just deliver bad news. He told me, straight out, that I should go build this myself, that it was absolutely the right move. And he booked me into a conference that same October, to help me actually start. I am still, genuinely, so grateful to him, and to Siemens Healthineers as a whole, for how honestly and how kindly this whole story ended. Nobody in this story was ever unkind to me. Not once. Not the CEO who gave me his time and his edits. Not the senior leaders who believed in something they couldn't fund. Not the man who called me that evening. They all opened doors for me and helped me realize my full potential.
I also want to show you my absolute favorite quote of all times, that was coincidentally shared with me on the day before the CEO meeting by two people, independently of another (goosebumps). THIS has been my full experience, and I love reminding myself of that every now and then:
The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would have never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings, and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Where it landed
I left Siemens Healthineers at the end of August 2019. No bad feelings at all, just gratitude for this company and the people I got to work with. I went self-employed that same autumn. And Siemens Healthineers became a client of mine almost immediately, and still is, to this day.
Of course in the whole story there were so many emotions evolved, so much fire, that eventually led to me feeling pretty burned out. So many wonderful people who supported me. So many doors that opened. So many learnings. And, looking back: it was all exactly right. By not getting the job as internal Global Mindfulness Manager, I went to start my own business and could work in the next years with over 30 DAX & SMEs.
If someone had told me in 2018 what a little Mindful Break outlook invitation would lead to, I would have never believed it.
And if you were in that meeting room, back in 2018 during my first Mindful Break series, in Erlangen, I would genuinely love to hear from you in the comments. I still think about that room more often than you'd expect.
Have a lovely day,
