I help organizations turn sleep and regeneration into a strategic advantage: for healthier people, stronger performance, and measurable results.
Every keynote combines solid research with business examples and closes with measures that work the same night. All topics are also available as workshops, online or on site, in German or English.
The future of leadership is no longer defined by knowledge and information alone. It depends on the ability to maintain focus, empathy, creativity, and emotional balance in an increasingly fast-paced and complex working world. Sleep is a critical foundation for all of these capabilities.
Sleep is the biological foundation that enables the brain to process information, consolidate memories, regulate stress, and develop effective solutions. A science-based and inspiring session that redefines sleep, not as a passive state of rest, but as a strategic investment in human potential, better leadership, and the future of performance.
Stress and sleep are deeply interconnected, often creating a self-reinforcing cycle. Participants gain a deeper understanding of how stress affects the brain and body, why a dysregulated nervous system can undermine mental performance, and how sleep serves as one of the most powerful tools for recovery and resilience.
Many people wake during the night, often in the early morning hours, only to find that their mind suddenly becomes highly active. In this workshop, participants explore why the brain can become so alert at night, what happens in the brain and nervous system during nighttime awakenings, and which strategies can help interrupt the cycle.
Restorative sleep is not a matter of chance, it is shaped by the interaction of biology, behavior, and the demands of modern life. One key principle is at the heart of the session: the night starts long before bedtime.
Understanding the importance of sleep does not always translate into feeling energized, focused, and consistently capable throughout the day. Participants learn how to understand and work with their natural energy patterns rather than constantly working against their biology.
Women face unique challenges when it comes to sleep, from a higher prevalence of sleep disorders to the physiological changes associated with the menstrual cycle, perimenopause, and menopause. Menopause is not simply a women’s health issue, it is a talent, leadership, and retention issue.
Sleep is where performance is built.
I work with Dr. Lutz Graumann, one of Europe’s leading sports and performance physicians, in Quest Vitality: an ecosystem for strategic resilience and performance safeguarding at decision maker level. At that level, chronic stress and missing recovery are not an individual problem. They are an operational risk that directly impairs decision quality and risk assessment.
Trained psychotherapist, systemic coach, over twenty years in high-performance banking environments including Citi and Crédit Mutuel. Her own practice near Rothschildpark in Frankfurt. Developer of a nationally certified prevention programme for sleep and stress, reimbursed by the German public health insurance system. Host of the podcast all.about.sleep. Works across Europe with leaders and teams in banking, pharmaceutical, chemical and industrial companies. Methods: ACT, EMDR, PEP, hypnosis, cognitive behavioural therapy.
Doctorate from the University of Würzburg Medical School, over twenty years of experience, internationally recognized as one of the leading experts in his field. Since 2005 he has run diagnostic screening and performance enhancement programmes worldwide, for Fortune 500 companies, NATO forces, Olympic athletes and consultancies such as McKinsey and Deloitte. Ten years as head of sports medicine for the German Armed Forces, then Chief Medical Officer of the German Ice Hockey Federation, today recovery expert for Eintracht Frankfurt, with a science cooperation at the University of Frankfurt. Four books published, named physician of the year by RUNNER’S WORLD.
How the programme is built
The programme runs in five stages that build on each other and are bookable individually. It begins with a shared language: an executive keynote that translates neurobiology, load and regulation so that the difference between healthy pressure and toxic dysregulation becomes speakable inside the organization. That destigmatizes the topic and takes the arbitrariness out of the discussion.
Diagnostics follow. Scientifically validated, anonymized surveys on mental load and wellbeing, complemented by physiological measurement of recovery capacity and cognitive fatigue under decision pressure. Gut feeling becomes a baseline that HR and leadership can read together.
In the implementation stage we work on tools that fit a real calendar: focus and clarity under extreme pressure, personal energy and regulation profiles, micro routines for meetings, travel and screen work, and recovery strategies for declared high-performance phases. The aim is not more discipline, it is less friction.
Where it gets personal, we work one to one and in confidence. Here we combine neuroscience-informed regulation with performance engineering: we stabilize the nervous system to protect cognitive performance and emotional control in high-stakes situations, use performance-oriented EMDR to remove stress imprints that unconsciously impair decision quality and leadership presence, and strengthen psychological flexibility with ACT as a leadership competence in uncertain environments. Nothing leaves the room, not even towards the company funding the programme.
Finally, durability. After the start come coaching at one month, evaluation and focus groups at three months, and a second evaluation at six months. Effect does not end with the workshop, it becomes verifiable across half a year.
Highly dynamic work environments generate permanent cognitive and emotional demand. The body absorbs it for a while without reporting back. Then judgement tips, long before anyone drops out.
An integrated, systematic programme instead of isolated interventions. Medical expertise from Dr. Lutz Graumann, leadership and regulation strategy from me. Modular: awareness, data-based diagnostics, skills, crisis competence, aftercare.
Not wellbeing for its own sake, but robust decisions in the hours where mistakes get expensive. Measurable in a pre and post comparison.
Performance medicine without the mind stops at lab values. Mental health without physiology stops at well-meant conversations. Quest Vitality joins the two in one programme: he builds the physical recovery architecture, I secure the mental stability that makes it load-bearing. Both of us come from environments where performance was not negotiable, professional sport and investment banking. That is why this programme survives a C-level calendar.
We do not work on how people feel. We work on the capacity in which your most important decisions get made. Recovery here is not a wellness topic, it is the condition under which cognitive performance becomes reproducible at all.
Depleted leadership underestimates risk and overestimates control. That is measurable and it is expensive. We safeguard the capacity in which risk assessment and judgement stay intact.
Losing a mission-critical person costs a multiple of prevention, in time, in handovers, in lost momentum. We intervene before load turns into a personnel risk.
Organizations do not copy the mission statement, they copy leadership behaviour. Once recovery is self-evident at the top, it becomes permissible throughout. That is the cheapest cultural lever you have.
Anonymized survey and physiological measurement before and after the programme. You get an objective baseline, an early warning signal for high-risk profiles, and a number you can defend in the boardroom.
In elite sport nobody plans to avoid load. What gets planned is the ability to regulate it. Systematic stabilization of mental health makes high performance possible beyond chronic overload. The shift is from reactive symptom management to proactive performance architecture.
Individually or as a sequenced programme. In the first call I recommend the format with the greatest leverage in your situation, even if that is the smaller one.
Nine studies that make sleep an economic factor: decisions, innovation, productivity, disease burden.
Sleep disorders carry a substantial epidemiological and economic burden in Europe. The authors call for sleep health to be recognized as a public health priority.
Workforce sleep deficits are associated with declining patent output. Novel, breakthrough patents are hit hardest.
Over 3.3 million participants: diverging from the recommended seven to eight hours raises mortality and cardiovascular risk. Poor sleep quality raises coronary heart disease risk by 44 percent.
88,461 adults wearing accelerometers: objectively measured sleep traits are linked to disease across all physiological systems, more broadly than self-reports suggest.
Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia improves work productivity. Seven randomized trials with 4,751 participants, with a direct effect on presenteeism.
Sleep deprivation degrades exactly the decisions that matter in leadership roles: novel, unpredictable situations without routine.
Meta-analysis across organizational research: sleep and work performance are positively related, across industries and roles.
Systematic review with meta-regression: short sleep duration raises the risk of all-cause mortality, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and obesity.
Sleep quality and job satisfaction are linked. Studied in nurses, an environment of shift work and high responsibility.
Four papers are available as PDF. The remaining ones are only accessible at the publisher for legal reasons.
One conversation to find the format with the greatest leverage.