About Cécile Meunier
Executive & Leadership Coach, Mentor & Founder of LeadHer Academy
I believe leadership is not about becoming someone else. It is about understanding who you are, recognising what may be holding you back, and developing the confidence, clarity and behaviours to create impact in a way that is authentically yours.
Today, I work as an executive, leadership and career coach, supporting leaders from Manager to C-suite level through pivotal moments in their careers and leadership journeys.
But my perspective on leadership was shaped long before I became a coach.
Over more than 20 years, I built an international career across technology, consulting and multinational organisations — leading transformation, developing teams, advising senior executives and experiencing first-hand what it means to navigate change, increasing responsibility and complex organisational environments.
That experience now shapes the way I coach: combining a deep understanding of business realities with a strong belief that sustainable performance starts with people.
From International Business to Leadership Development
My career has always been about transformation — although what I wanted to transform evolved over time.
I started my international career in the technology sector at Google in Dublin, working with international clients at a time when digital was fundamentally changing how companies connected with their customers. I then joined AOL in Paris, managing search product strategy and monetisation across EMEA.
From there, I moved deeper into digital transformation. As Head of Digital Products at SoLocal, I led product innovation and helped develop new revenue streams during a major transformation of the company's business model. At TRUVO in Antwerp, I continued that journey, leading digital portfolio transformation and working across teams and senior stakeholders to turn strategy into implementation.
In 2016, I returned to Google in Brussels to lead the Belgian rollout of its national digital capability-building program. Working with public institutions and external partners, we designed and deployed training initiatives that reached more than 15,000 small and medium-sized business professionals.
My focus was gradually shifting. Technology and strategy still mattered, but I was becoming increasingly interested in what enables people and organisations to actually change.
That led me into business transformation consulting. As Partner & Senior Business Transformation Consultant at Digipolitans, I advised C-level executives, including clients at ING and Proximus, on organisational design, governance and new ways of working. I facilitated executive alignment sessions, helped resolve organisational tensions and translated complex transformation challenges into practical roadmaps.
I also recruited, evaluated and mentored consultants and managers — making people development an increasingly important part of my role.
My final corporate position brought these different dimensions together.
As Head of Marketing & Communication at Nestlé Infant Nutrition, I managed a €20M+ budget, led multicultural teams and served as a member of the Belgilux Executive Leadership Team. Alongside business and marketing responsibilities, I sponsored digital transformation and new ways of working, contributed to organisational change and employee engagement, and helped simplify decision-making and collaboration across teams.
I also became an internal coach in Nestlé's Everyday Coaching programme, supporting managers in strengthening coaching conversations and team development.
By then, something had become very clear to me:
Transformation may begin with strategy, but it succeeds — or fails — through people.
That realisation ultimately led me to make leadership and human development the centre of my professional life.
From Leading Transformation to Coaching Leaders
Today, as an independent Executive Coach and Leadership Development Consultant, I bring those two decades of business and leadership experience into my work with leaders and organisations.
I have delivered more than 1,200 hours of executive, leadership and career coaching, supporting leaders from middle management to C-suite level across Europe, the US and APAC.
My clients work across technology, FMCG, pharmaceuticals, finance, automotive, retail, energy and media but many of the leadership challenges they face are surprisingly universal.
I support leaders at critical inflection points: stepping into a promotion, taking on broader responsibilities, navigating organisational change, reconsidering their career direction or learning to create greater influence and impact.
Alongside individual coaching, I design and facilitate leadership workshops, group coaching and development programs around leadership under pressure, influence, stakeholder management, communication and sustainable behaviour change.
What I bring to those conversations is not only coaching expertise. I understand what it feels like to operate inside complex organisations, manage competing priorities, influence senior stakeholders, lead transformation and be accountable for business results.
I have been on both sides of the conversation.
My Approach to Leadership & Change
Leadership starts with awareness — and becomes meaningful through action.
I don’t believe there is one model of a “great leader” that everyone should learn to imitate.
Leadership happens in context. Different people bring different strengths, and different situations require different responses. What matters is developing enough self-awareness to understand how you lead, how others experience you, and what may be limiting your impact.
How do you respond when pressure rises? What assumptions influence your decisions? What are you avoiding? Where are you over-investing? Are you creating space for others to contribute? And are the choices you make aligned with the leader — and person — you want to be?
But awareness alone does not create change.
My approach is therefore deeply grounded in action and experimentation. Development should translate into different conversations, decisions and behaviours in the workplace — not simply interesting reflections during a coaching session or workshop.
Change is a collective challenge
My years leading and supporting business transformation taught me something equally important: change may start with a strategy, but it only becomes real through people.
And the way we experience change is evolving. Organisations are operating in environments where transformation is increasingly continuous, decisions need to be made faster, complexity is growing and leaders and teams are under greater pressure to adapt.
In that context, I believe one of the most important capabilities we can develop is the ability to navigate change together.
No leader has all the answers. No individual sees a complex situation from every angle. We need other perspectives to challenge our assumptions, help us step back when pressure narrows our thinking, and open possibilities we may not see alone.
Collective intelligence turns experience into learning
This is why collaboration and collective intelligence are central to my approach to leadership development.
I believe there is enormous knowledge already present within organisations — in people’s experiences, successes, mistakes and different ways of seeing the same challenge. The question is whether organisations create the conditions for that knowledge to circulate.
When leaders learn to listen more deeply, ask better questions, seek support and learn from one another, they become better equipped to navigate complexity. At the same time, organisations can reduce silos, strengthen trust, improve the circulation of ideas and develop a greater capacity to adapt.
This conviction is also why I became certified in professional co-development, a structured peer-learning approach that uses collective intelligence to help professionals work through real workplace challenges, broaden their perspectives and turn shared learning into concrete action.
For me, asking for support is not a sign that a leader lacks capability. In increasingly complex and fast-moving organisations, knowing how to draw on the intelligence of others is a leadership capability in itself.
Ultimately, whether I am working with one leader, a group of managers or an organisation, my objective remains the same:
to help people see more clearly, expand their choices, learn from one another and turn insight into action — so they can navigate change, create meaningful impact and help their organisations thrive.
Advancing Women in Leadership
Helping talented women step forward without asking them to become someone else.
Supporting women in their career progression has become an increasingly important part of both my professional work and my personal commitment.
Through coaching, mentoring and conversations with women at different stages of their careers, I kept encountering the same paradox: high capability does not always translate into a willingness to step forward.
Organisational culture and bias remain part of the equation. But I have also seen less visible barriers: perfectionism, impostor feelings, approval seeking, fear of conflict, over-investment, difficulties setting boundaries, or the belief that excellent work should simply speak for itself.
I have also seen how career decisions interact with life decisions — relationships, parenthood, changing priorities and different phases of a woman's life.
And I became convinced that developing more women leaders cannot simply mean teaching women to conform to traditional models of leadership.
We need to remove barriers while also recognising the strengths women already bring.
This conviction led me to create LeadHer Academy, a leadership development program designed to help high-potential women move from capability to readiness for greater leadership responsibility.
It is also reflected in my voluntary work as a career coach for Women With Potential, where I provide six months of one-to-one coaching to women navigating career decisions, and as a career mentor with Team4Job, supporting job seekers with professional positioning, networking and career transitions.
My objective is not to “fix women”.
It is to help talented women recognise their capability, expand their choices and take ownership of how they want to lead and progress.
Because leadership wisdom should be shared.
Coaching has shown me how powerful it can be to discover that a challenge we thought was ours alone has been experienced and overcome by someone else.
That belief inspired me to create Together Women Rise, a podcast where women leaders share the real stories behind their careers.
We talk not only about success, but about what happened behind it: self-doubt, setbacks, relationships, difficult environments, motherhood, unconventional choices, resilience and the moments that changed the way they lead.
There are no ready-made formulas.
Instead, each conversation offers perspectives, practical lessons and experiences that other women can question, adapt and use in their own journey.
Because we don't only learn from experts. We learn from one another.
Experience & Credentials
20+ Years of International Business & Leadership Experience
My approach combines professional coaching and leadership development expertise with more than 20 years of first-hand experience in international business, transformation, consulting and people leadership.
Before becoming an independent coach, I held leadership, transformation and consulting roles across organisations including Google, AOL, SoLocal, TRUVO, Digipolitans and Nestlé, where I was a member of the Belgilux Executive Leadership Team. This experience gives me a practical understanding of the environments in which my clients operate — from organisational change and increasing complexity to stakeholder management, business performance and people development.
Today, I coach leaders from Manager to C-suite level, supporting individuals and organisations across Europe and internationally.
Professional credentials and experience include:
ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC)
1,200+ hours of executive, leadership and career coaching
Certified Professional Co-Development Facilitator, trained in the Payette & Champagne methodology
Prosci ADKAR Change Management certified
Coaching experience from Manager to C-suite level
Leadership development, group coaching and in-company workshop facilitation
Former Partner & Senior Business Transformation Consultant
Former member of the Nestlé Belgilux Executive Leadership Team
More than 20 years of international business and leadership experience
Professional experience across Europe, the US and APAC
Fluent coaching in English and French
Having studied, lived and worked across several countries, including the UK, Ireland, France and Belgium, I bring a cross-cultural perspective to leadership development and an understanding of the different organisational environments in which leaders need to operate.
Together, these experiences allow me to bridge three dimensions that I believe are increasingly interconnected: individual leadership development, collective intelligence and organisational change.
Leadership Development Grounded in Real-World Experience
Whether you are navigating your next leadership challenge or looking to develop leadership capability across your organisation, my work combines business experience, professional coaching and practical application to create change that lasts beyond the conversation.
Explore my executive, leadership and career coaching, professional co-development programs, in-company workshops and LeadHer Academy to find the approach that best fits your needs.
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