Client case studies
Speak with data. Lead with story.
The following case studies share a common thread: in each engagement, the work done in the room didn’t stay in the room. I love to make sure that participants in my workshops and trainings don’t practice on fictional scenarios or dry theoretical content. I love to adapt the exercises to them, to allow the learning to happen around real situations, with real data, and real stakes. This results in much more than just skill development: together we create results that can be used immediately. E.g., presentations ready to deliver, arguments that can convince, and stories that can drive action.
This is the defining principle behind every workshop and program I design. Training that connects to real work creates real capability – faster, more confidently, and with outcomes that last beyond the session itself. Don’t take my word for it, flip through the case studies below to see for yourself.
What my clients say
From training room to boardroom
Munich-based E-Commerce company| Presentation Skills & Data Storytelling | team workshop
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CONTEXT
The situation
A Munich-based e-commerce platform organization needed to upskill their internal IT department in presentation skills. The request came in a familiar form: twelve people who work with data every day, but struggle to communicate it clearly – especially upward, to non-technical leadership.
The added complexity: the team had a live, urgent issue on the table. They needed to present a sensitive, complex, and data-heavy topic to the board. And they were looking for a compelling, well-structured argument to do it. They told me clearly: we have only one shot at this!
What we did
Apart from the theoretical basis, everything about this workshop was tailored to them: the team’s own real situation was the learning material.
Over the course of the workshop, participants learned the core principles of Data Storytelling: data analysis, narrative structure, visual clarity, and above all clarity about the audience. We looked at how to build an argument from data – and immediately applied these learnings to building their actual board presentation.
This meant every skill learned was instantly relevant. Every exercise had a real stake. By the end of the session, the team had practiced presenting and built something they could use the following day.
What changed
- 12 people upskilled in Data Storytelling and presentation fundamentals.
- 1 board-ready presentation built collaboratively during the workshop – structured as a narrative, backed by data, tailored to a non-technical executive audience. We even prepared a set of “difficult questions to expect” with the data-based answers in the backup.
- Clear understanding of how to adapt communication style to different audiences, including senior leadership.
- Shared language around data communication across the team – making internal alignment on complex topics faster and clearer.
- Double value delivered: capability building and a tangible business output, in a single engagement.
"Working on actual data acts as a shortcut to learning and adoption."
Present with Power
International non-profit organization | Data Storytelling & Presentation Skills | group workshop
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CONTEXT
The situation
Volunteers at a non-profit organization face a particular communication challenge: they need to be compelling in front of an audience of volunteers without measurable incentives. They’re often looking for real business skills which they can transfer to their own professional context. The bar for authenticity is high. Generic slides and rehearsed delivery don’t cut it.
When this group wanted to move from “death by PowerPoint” to presentations that genuinely land, the ask was clear: make it practical, make it relevant, and make it work for real situations.
What we did
The workshop “Present with Power: From Death by PowerPoint to Seducing with Slides” was built around co-creation rather than instruction.
Rather than presenting theory and asking participants to apply it to imagined scenarios, we worked directly with a variety of real business situations. In smaller sub-groups, we built three complete business stories from scratch: structuring the narrative, considering the logic, and crafting the argument for a specific audience.
The environment mattered as much as the method. From the first exercise, the group worked in a spirit of mutual respect and psychological safety. They were giving and receiving feedback honestly, experimenting without fear, and learning from each other as much as from the facilitator. As a bonus, the teams had a lot of fun, which helps learning enormously.
What changed
- 3 complete, audience-ready business stories co-created during the session – each grounded in a real situation, not a classroom exercise.
- Rapid skill transfer: participants moved from concept to fully structured narrative within a single workshop.
- Confidence built in structuring data-backed arguments for non-specialist audiences.
- High levels of engagement, constructive peer feedback, and genuine enjoyment of the process.
- Demonstrated that impactful Data Storytelling skills can be built quickly, even outside a corporate training budget – when the method is right and the environment is safe.
"Slides don’t drive action. People do."
Finding the story behind the sale
Global IT Organisation, Brussels | Business Storytelling for Pre-Sales | team workshop (in Dutch)
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CONTEXT
The situation
The cybersecurity pre-sales team of a global IT organization in Brussels faces a challenge that is at once very specific and surprisingly common: their job is to sell something critically important, yet they struggle to make people truly feel it.
Cybersecurity is a domain where the stakes are high, the technical complexity is real, and the audience is often unconvinced until it’s too late. The team knows their subject inside out. All they need is a sharper, more compelling way to wrap it in story. At the same time, they need to do this without being able to reference their own clients, whose identities and situations are, by the very nature of the work, strictly confidential.
What we did
The workshop opened with a focused introduction to storytelling theory to a shared framework and vocabulary, before moving quickly into practice. Participants were invited to choose from a set of storytelling frameworks and immediately apply them to their own challenge: how to position the growing urgency of cybersecurity to board-level audiences.
What emerged in the room was more layered than a standard messaging exercise. The group worked in dept on how to open with impact – identifying striking, credible statistics about the scale and cost of cyber incidents that could serve as genuine door-openers. They also surfaced something more structural: a recognition that their greatest credibility asset – their client track record – is also the one thing they could never share.
This led to a pivotal insight: the solution wasn’t to avoid the subject, but to build a bank of carefully anonymized client data-points. All they really needed was data about the outcomes, patterns, and impact figures that could be used to demonstrate expertise and build trust, without ever compromising confidentiality.
What changed
- Pre-sales team equipped with a clearer, more confident narrative for positioning cybersecurity to senior stakeholders.
- A set of high-impact door-opener statements developed during the session – grounded in real data on the scale and cost of cyber incidents.
- Concrete framework identified for building a “statement bank” of anonymized client credentials – turning a confidentiality constraint into a structured storytelling asset.
- Participants left with a clear next step: curating anonymized data-points that could be used to build ethos (real credibility) in future conversations.
- Workshop delivered entirely in Dutch – because storytelling principles are the same across cultures and languages.
