ANGELA HEISE
Nominee for what Award/s
Trusted Mentor and Coach Award
Real and Relatable Voice Award
Amplifier of Good Award
Trusted Mentor and Coach Award
Trusted Mentor and Coach Award
Why did you first step into mentorship or coaching?
I didn’t plan to become a mentor or coach. It was a natural progression.
Even in my teenage years, I was committed to breaking harmful family patterns. I devoured every self-development book I could find, initially for myself and my future children, so I would not pass on toxic dynamics. Eventually, after working on myself for more than fifteen years, I started helping others make sense of their lives too.
Over time, I had already become the person people turned to for clarity and emotional support, so turning it into a profession was the next logical step.
What started as personal survival became a commitment to change - for myself, and eventually for others.
After years of working in different careers and countries, coaching became the space where I could bring everything together: my lived experience, my training, and my deep understanding of human behaviour.
What philosophy or values guide how you mentor others?
I believe in truth, choice, and emotional responsibility. I do not fix people. I hold up a mirror so they can see themselves clearly, without judgement. My Emotional Productivity® framework helps people understand their own patterns and build the human skills they need to thrive.
I treat people like responsible and accountable adults, not projects. Growth does not happen in scripts. It happens in real time, in relationship, and through tools that actually work.
I generally say that I help people climb mountains, but I never carry them. My goal is to make sure they can climb the next mountain without (much) help from me, until they don’t need me at all.
My mission is twofold: I help capable, driven, and exhausted people stop performing at life and start leading themselves, and I contribute to the evolution of human consciousness.
Tell us about a mentee or client transformation you are proud of.
One woman came to me after years of high achievement, but she was burnt out, disconnected, and filled with self-doubt. In six months of working together, she learned to feel again, reconnect with her creativity, and stop over-functioning in both her job and marriage. She now leads a team with clarity, has rebuilt her relationship with her husband and teenage daughter.
What changed? She stopped abandoning herself and finally started prioritising her health and wellbeing.
How do you continue to grow so you can serve better?
I live what I teach. I work with coaches and mentors. I invest in workshops, in learning. I dance, I meditate, I cook, I walk barefoot in the garden. I ask hard questions about my own blind spots. And I do not pretend to have it all figured out. That keeps me honest, and it keeps me evolving.
I will be working on myself until the day I day. And I will always be work in progress.
What advice do you have for women stepping into leadership roles?
Do not confuse leadership with being nice or agreeable.
Lead with clarity and kindness.
Set personal and professional boundaries.
Know your needs and recognise that others have them too.
Hold people to high standards so they can grow, but do not expect perfection.
Step away from micromanaging and being the Mother Hen. People already have a mother - they do not need another one.
Your job as a leader is to make yourself redundant but not irrelevant. And most importantly: to help create new leaders.
Always remember: your emotional wellbeing is not separate from your leadership. It is your leadership.
Your job is not to carry everyone. It is to model what a functional adult acts like.
Real and Relatable Voice Award
Real and Relatable Voice Award
Share a time when being raw and real changed everything for you.
It was after I got married that everything I thought I had worked through came roaring back. Despite decades of self-development, training, and insight, I found myself repeating the exact family patterns I had sworn to break.
I held myself back. I submitted to my grandmother’s indoctrination. The one I thought I had resisted my whole life: that a woman must always walk the lower path. I sabotaged career opportunities because they would have meant leaving my husband behind. I became the nurturer, the caretaker… and eventually, I started to feel like his mother.
That moment - realising I was living what I thought I had already healed - was devastating. But it was also the moment I stopped performing in life and got deeply real with myself.
I left the marriage. I started taking risks, stepping up professionally, and rebuilt my inner trust. And I began creating the Emotional Productivity® tools I now use to help others.
I do not teach from theory. I teach from scars and healing. I teach what it means to confront the beliefs that live in our bodies long after we think we have outgrown them and to choose something different.
How do you balance vulnerability and leadership?
I don’t see them as opposites. Vulnerability, to me, isn’t emotional exposure without boundaries. It’s honesty with discernment.
I share what is true when it is useful and when I have done the work to speak from clarity, not from intellectual awareness, because I have read a book.
(self-)Leadership means showing up with my whole self, including the messy parts, but making sure I’ve done enough integration to be steady in the sharing.
How has your authenticity made others feel seen or heard?
People often tell me, “You say the things I did not even know I needed to hear,” or, “You put words to what I have been feeling for years.” For me, that’s the power of being real: not to make it about me, but to speak to something others recognise in themselves.
It’s never about my story, but occasionally, when it feels appropriate, I will offer an example from my own life to highlight a point. I speak to what is often unspoken: the shame, the fear, the frustration, the longing for something better. That’s where connection happens.
After 28 years of coaching, I have learned a lot about what it means to be human. My ability to be non-judgmental, while still naming when someone is making choices that are not working for them, and showing that I, too, did the best I could with the resources I had at the time, helps people realise that it is about progress, not perfection.
What myths about perfection do you wish more people would break?
That healing is a straight line.
That you have to be healed to be worthy.
That you need to have it all together to lead.
That being exhausted is a badge of honour.
And especially for women: that we must be endlessly accommodating to be loved.
These myths keep people trapped in performance and disconnection. I want especially women to know they can lead without betraying themselves.
I have lived through the burnout that chasing those myths creates. There’s nothing noble about self-erasure.
You can be powerful and still feel.
You can be direct without being cruel.
You can be real and flawed and still be respected.
What role does truth-telling play in your work or message?
Truth-telling is the core of everything I do. To me, it’s how we begin to break old patterns. It’s how we reclaim self-trust. And it’s how we build relationships that are honest and sustainable.
I speak the truth - kindly, clearly, and without apology - because I believe that clarity is compassionate. Whether I am coaching, writing, or teaching, my goal is always the same: to help people live lives that are not just functional, but deeply aligned. And truth is the doorway to that.
Amplifier of Good Award
Amplifier of Good Award
What cause or mission lights you up the most?
I am most lit up by the mission of emotional literacy, by teaching people how to name, understand, and respond to their emotions with clarity and care.
When we develop the human skills to communicate honestly, set boundaries, and honour our needs, everything changes: our families, workplaces, and communities. Emotional immaturity is often at the root of dysfunction. Emotional growth is the way forward.
How have you used your platform or business to create positive change?
I have built my work around helping people come back to themselves. Over the years, I have coached thousands of people and trained leaders across industries, not to perform better, but to be better. To reconnect with their emotions, their needs, and their sense of agency.
I have created courses that help women reclaim their voice, their energy, and their boundaries, especially those who have spent years putting everyone else first.
I run workshops where women say things they have never said out loud before. Where shame is met with clarity. Where self-doubt gives way to choice.
I write content that normalises what we are taught to hide: grief, resentment, burnout, fear, desire, and the longing to feel seen and heard.
I speak to what others often cannot find the words for. And I teach that being human is not a flaw to overcome, but that it’s a strength to integrate. When we stop performing and start relating, everything changes: how we lead, how we parent, how we partner, and how we show up in the world.
Tell us about a moment you saw your “good work” ripple outward.
A client once told me, “You didn’t just change my life. You changed how I mother my daughter.” That ripple matters deeply to me.
I started this work because I wanted to break the cycle for the next generation. What I couldn’t change in my own family, I hoped to transform for my future children.
Ironically, I never had children of my own. But again and again, my clients tell me they are glad I didn’t, because it means I am here to help them.
I have seen workshop participants reconnect with estranged parents or partners after applying one conversation tool. I have seen people leave relationships where they felt invisible and reclaim a sense of self they thought they had lost.
After twenty-eight years of working as a trainer and coach, I have witnessed many ripples that extend far beyond the coaching room. They are what keep me going.
What obstacles did you face while amplifying others?
The biggest obstacle has been doing this work in a world that often prefers performance over truth.
I have had to choose integrity over popularity, depth over scale, and keep going, even when it felt like I was shouting into the void.
And like many women, I have had to work through the conditioning that says being ‘too much’ or ‘too honest’ will make me unlikable or unlovable.
What’s your bigger vision for making an even greater impact?
I want to normalise emotional maturity as a (self-)leadership standard, not a bonus.
I want to see women over 40 leading themselves and others, professionally and personally, with wisdom and not waiting for permission.
I want to make emotional education and human skills as foundational as literacy and maths. And I want the ripple to be global, starting with one honest, grounded conversation at a time.