Our Champions
Nathalie Heynderickx
Creator
Nathalie Heynderickx is an Australian-based tech leader with a global perspective and a future-focus. The Mindful CIO is Nathalie’s initiative to promote mindful leadership best practices for tech professionals around Australia and abroad.
Nathalie is the Founder of The Mindful CIO Executive Coaching : a boutique executive coaching practice working exclusively with tech professionals, teams and leaders. On a daily basis, she helps tech leaders to enhance performance, innovation and resilience using practices grounded in neuroscience and research.
Prior to this, Nathalie held a range of leadership roles in the tech arena, including BI Governance Manager, Scrum Master, Solution Architect, Business Analyst and SAP Consultant and Programmer. She has worked for global consulting companies including as IBM, EY and Accenture in the data analytics and business intelligence space.
In the corporate mindfulness space, Nathalie has facilitated programs for blue chip organisations like HP, ASIC, BP, Bendigo Bank, Air Services, Peugeot and Mars Petcare.
Today, Nathalie combines professional coaching for executive-level tech professionals, with a lecturing role at Monash University in post-graduate professional development and positive psychology.
She is the author of The Mindful CIO Manifesto, and founder of The Mindful AI Manifesto: a non-profit which advocates for Human Values in AI.
Michael Lambert
Co-creator
Michael is a passionate technologist. He believes that technology can be used to make both individual lives, and the greater human race, better. Michael coaches and mentors individuals from entry-level stage to CEO level; using his skills to move individuals and teams from under-performing to high-performing.
When Michael was introduced to The Mindful CIO Manifesto, he had a light bulb moment. Although he had always been conscious of the impact of his talk and actions on others, he’d never had something that helped solidify his coaching focus on mental health and wellbeing. The Manifesto was the missing pillar to support his leadership style and way of working. Today, Michael is empowered to lead by example using the declarations in the Manifesto as a guide.
Our Story
The seeds of the Mindful CIO Community were planted in 2014 when Nathalie joined the Potential Project, facilitating corporate mindfulness programs. In August 2018 an article containing the original Mindful CIO Manifesto was published on LinkedIn. Nathalie used the Manifesto as part of the leadership development and coaching services before being invited to the CIONet Australia Mindful Digital Leader conference in May 2021.
Following this conference the idea of revising the Mindful CIO Manifesto was discussed. Through the discussion of the Manifesto revision, a number of people were invited to have input, and through the process the concept of the Mindful CIO Community was formed.
As the Mindful CIO Community does not have any sponsors it has been relying on organic growth through word-of-mouth promotion by champions and members. Our events are primarily attended by Australian technical leaders and those from similar timezones to Australia. Over the last 6 months we have observed an increase in numbers of those attending from other regions.
Throughout the life of the Mindful CIO Community we have always actively sought feedback and sought to interatively improve our methods of engagement and the reach of the community.
Over the last two years we have had 122 tech professionals attend our online events from over 100 organisations and 8 countries, including Australia, Denmark, Germany, Kenya, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Poland and United Arab Emirates. Of this, 21% were female and 38% attended multiple times.
The Mindful CIO
A mindful CIO is the ideal tech leader for our disruptive, uncertain digital era.
At The Mindful CIO, we inspire and influence tech leaders in all industries to lead more mindfully.
Our work is driven by The Mindful CIO Manifesto: a call-to-action for Australian tech professionals to build a human-centric culture.
The Mindful CIO Manifesto is informed by a deep understanding of the challenges today’s tech leaders face, and leading practices in self-development and holistic wellbeing.
Leading for a disruptive future
Your role as a tech leader in an organisation is now more important than ever. Your decisions, and the actions of your team, play a critical role beyond the borders of the business you work for.
The Mindful CIO is a professional community platform designed to encourage collaboration between tech professionals; and commitment to the values and practices of mindful leadership.
What The Mindful CIO offers:
1.Connections with inspirational, passionate and mindful tech leaders who are role models and mentors
2.Resources to inform and upskill you in mindful leadership approaches, tailored specifically for the tech industry and tech roles
3.Interaction with your peers, through online discussion and community events