If you have spent decades delivering for others and are quietly wondering when it becomes about you, this is that work.
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Live Aligned · Feel Alive · Become Whole
My story
Change is not a project. It is a human journey.
In my late 40s, I was let go from a role I had dedicated myself to. It left me questioning my identity and recognising how long I had been suppressing my inner voice.
The turning point came when a doctor's words at a seminar described my own experience. That moment became the beginning of a redesign, not through compromise, but through alignment with who I truly am.
My 50s became a golden age. Today I guide others through the same journey.
Read the full story
"I began seeing myself as empowered and the cause in my life rather than reacting to things around me."
Kelly C.
"I released patterns holding me back for years. I feel powerful, lighter, stronger, and free."
César C.
"I've achieved more in the last three months than in the previous eight. I am earning more."
Grant F.
Free guide
Redesign Your Career with Authenticity
Five practical shifts to break the cycle and step forward with clarity. No sign-up required.
Keynotes and facilitated sessions on authenticity, change, and what it takes to lead yourself through both. For leadership summits, corporate events, and professional conferences.
Explore speaking
Coaching
From Insight to Transformation
Two pathways designed to take you from where you are to where you are capable of being. Focused breakthroughs or sustained momentum, both lead to lasting change.
Explore coaching
Change Consulting
Organisational Transformation
Strategic change management for organisations navigating large-scale transformation. 25 years of global delivery across insurance, technology, and hospitality.
Explore consulting
Where would you like to begin?
A free conversation
Free 25-min Consultation
A focused conversation to explore what is possible. Come curious, leave with clarity.
Get in touch
An intensive transformation
Breakthrough Programme
Core-level change in an intensive session. What has held you back for years shifts, and does not return.
Learn more
Find what is yours
Origin Programme
Discover what was always there, beneath the version of yourself that was shaped for you.
Learn more
Speaking
Three talks. One invitation to become more yourself.
Speaking at leadership summits, corporate events, and professional conferences. Talks that create shared understanding and the inner shift that moves people forward with clarity and confidence.
01
The Life You Were Expected to Live
For those who have achieved what was expected and are quietly asking, is this it? A talk about living by your own definition of success.
02
Outer Events. Inner Reality.
Events do not define us. The meaning we assign to them does. Shift the story, and the path forward opens.
03
Becoming Whole Again
Many leaders perform rather than lead. This talk explores what becomes possible when you stop managing your image and lead from who you actually are.
In my late 40s, after years of delivering results for global organisations and quietly suppressing my own voice, I was let go. It was the moment I had been avoiding and, as it turned out, the moment I needed most.
A doctor at a seminar described his patients' symptoms. I recognised myself in every word. For decades I had shaped myself around other people's expectations, my parents', my bosses', my colleagues'. I had become very good at performing the right version of myself. And in doing so, I had lost the thread of who I truly was.
That moment became the beginning of a redesign. Not a rebrand. A genuine return to myself.
My background
25 years. Three continents. One consistent thread.
My career spans financial services, technology, consulting, and hospitality across Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. I have held senior change and transformation roles at Swiss Re, PartnerRe, Zurich Insurance Group, Galytix, Expedia and Swissôtel Management, and I hold an Executive MBA from IMD in Lausanne.
The thread through all of it: I have always been drawn to the human experience of change, what it does to people, and what becomes possible when they choose to meet it differently.
Executive MBA, IMDChange Practitioner, ProsciNLP Master Coach and Trainer
The turning point
My 50s became a golden age.
After my own breakthrough, I needed to make sense of what had shifted. I trained in NLP, Hypnosis, Time Line Therapy® and Huna, following what resonated rather than a plan. Something in those tools matched what I had experienced from the inside.
What I understood through training, I had already felt in my own life. I removed the mask I had worn with my parents for decades and found genuine connection. I stepped out from behind the role I had performed at work and started speaking from a different place. I still slip sometimes. But I recognise it now, and I know how to find my way back.
Twenty-five years inside global organisations gave me a language for the world many of my clients come from. That training gave me a different language for what happens underneath it. Somewhere along the way, the two simply came together.
Three ways of working
Each arrived differently. Together they make sense.
Speaking gives me joy. It also scares me, in the best way. Standing in a room and asking people to look at themselves, and at the change they are navigating, means being willing to go first.
Consulting is the work I spent 25 years building around change. I know it from the inside: the complexity, the culture, the gap between strategy and the people who have to live through it.
Coaching found me in my late 40s, when I was navigating my own change. I am grateful it did. It awakened my intuition I had long buried, and changed how I see everything. Today the coaching and consulting integrate and enrich each other, with change as the thread running through all three.
My approach
The ALIGN Method
My work is guided by the ALIGN Method, a five-stage process I developed from my own experience and my training in NLP and transformational coaching.
A
Awaken
Reconnect with the part of you that has been quiet for too long, and open awareness to something deeper still.
L
Listen
Reduce external noise and turn inward. Pay attention to what feels meaningful, right, or off, beyond roles, responsibilities, and external expectations.
I
Integrate
Bring together what you know on the surface and what you feel more deeply beneath it. Close the gap between how you appear and what is true for you.
G
Grow
Turn insight into direction. Begin making your own choices and taking actions that reflect who you are becoming, not who you were expected to be.
N
Nurture
Embody this new way of being through everyday choices, so it becomes natural, consistent, and truly yours.
Let's talk
Ready to start the conversation?
Based in Switzerland, working with clients across Europe and internationally, in English and Japanese.
Change often arrives before people are ready to talk about it.
Your audience is navigating change. Some are uncertain, some are resistant, and most are quietly carrying questions they have not yet put into words. The right talk does not just inform. It shifts something in the room.
What happens in the room
People feel heard.
People recognise themselves in the stories. Uncertainty becomes an invitation rather than a threat. Audiences leave not just informed, but with a different relationship to what is changing around them.
Speaking is sought when
Eri is most often brought in when change is already present but its human cost remains unspoken: when fear or uncertainty are quietly shaping decisions, and the room needs someone who understands what that feels like from the inside. The goal is not just to inform, but to create the shift that lets people move forward.
On stage
Moments from the room.
The three talks
Three perspectives. One invitation.
Each talk speaks to a different moment in the change journey.
01
The Life You Were Expected to Live
For professionals who have achieved what they set out to achieve and are quietly asking, is this it? This talk explores the unspoken weight of a life built around others' expectations, the moment you realise you have been living someone else's definition of success, and what it takes to find your own.
Career transition events, leadership development programmes, women's leadership forums, alumni events.
02
Outer Events. Inner Reality.
Events do not define us. The meaning we assign to them does. This talk explores how the stories we carry about setbacks, change, and uncertainty shape every decision we make. Shift the story, and the path forward opens. Particularly relevant for teams navigating organisational change.
Many leaders perform rather than lead. They project confidence while privately disconnecting from what they believe. This talk explores the cost of that gap and what becomes possible when you stop managing your image and start leading from who you actually are.
Senior leadership retreats, culture and values programmes, professional conferences, career transition events.
Formats
How Eri works with your event.
Keynote
Story-driven talks
Emotionally honest, story-driven talks that challenge audiences to rethink success, reconnect with themselves, and navigate change with greater awareness. 20 to 90 minutes.
Workshop
Interactive sessions
Interactive experiences that combine reflection, discussion, and practical exercises to deepen self-awareness and create meaningful personal change. 90 minutes to 4 hours.
Facilitated Conversation
Guided dialogue
A guided group dialogue for smaller leadership groups. Eri brings the questions; the group brings the answers. 60 minutes to 4 hours.
"Eri provided a very clear reminder on how our thought process works and how we can change it to get to our desired outcome in life. Eri created a welcoming environment where all the participants felt so comfortable and safe, that we ended up sharing deeply personal thoughts with each other until almost 10pm!"
Mari I.
Enquire
Bring Eri to your event.
Speaking engagements begin with an open conversation to clarify context, intent, and audience.
Two pathways. One destination: becoming more fully yourself.
You are established. Experienced. Successful by most measures. And yet something feels unresolved, not a crisis, more like a question that keeps surfacing. You have been here long enough to know it will not go away on its own.
Both pathways are grounded in the ALIGN Method and draw on NLP, Hypnosis, Time Line Therapy®, and over 25 years of experience working with professionals navigating change.
01
Pathway 01
Breakthrough Programme
Release and Realignment
You are experienced and professionally established. Yet something has shifted. A change you did not choose, or a crossroads you could no longer avoid, has surfaced questions that can no longer be set aside.
This programme is for you if
From the outside, everything looks as it should. Inside, something has felt off for a long time.
You feel the pull to move forward, yet keep finding yourself in the same place.
There is something you want that you have not let yourself go after. You are not entirely sure why.
You know this moment cannot be postponed.
You do not want to look back and wonder what your life could have been.
What becomes possible
What has kept you in the same place for years shifts in the session itself. Not gradually. At the root.
You gain clarity on what you actually want, beneath what you were told to want, and you act from it.
The fear, the doubt, the old story. What once stopped you no longer does.
You move forward with a confidence that is yours, not borrowed from a role you have been playing.
You feel like yourself again, perhaps for the first time in years.
What the programme includes
This is not a conversation about your situation. It works directly with how your mind has stored the past, reaching the beliefs and patterns that have been quietly running your life beneath the surface. In one intensive session, we find the root of what has been holding you back. Not the story you have been telling yourself, but what lies underneath it. You leave the session different.
The three months of integration coaching that follow are not a supplement. They are the part that makes the change permanent. Together, we make sure that what shifts in the session becomes the foundation you build from.
Format: One intensive, delivered as three four-hour online sessions or a full day in person, followed by three months of integration coaching.
"This experience has changed how I think, feel and act. I understand myself with far more clarity, and I am moving forward with a sense of ease, responsibility and confidence."
Kelly C.
"My goals no longer feel distant or unachievable. They are now a natural part of who I am. I feel powerful, lighter, stronger, and free."
You are capable and self-aware. You have also been running on a version of yourself that was largely shaped before you had a say in it. This programme surfaces what is actually yours.
This programme is for you if
You are self-aware enough to see the pattern. Changing it on your own has not worked.
Your days are full, but something that truly matters to you keeps being pushed aside.
You start things with real intention and watch the momentum quietly disappear.
You are good at what you do, and increasingly unclear on whether it is what you actually want to be doing.
You sense that the life you are living is not quite the one that is yours.
What becomes possible
You discover what you actually want, not the version shaped by years of expectation and obligation.
You stop explaining yourself in terms of what you do and start knowing yourself in terms of who you are.
You make choices from your own values, with a clarity that does not need anyone else’s approval.
You move from reaction to intentional choice, in your work, your relationships, and how you spend your time.
You build momentum that holds, because it is grounded in who you are, not in who you have been performing.
What the programme includes
We open with structured sessions that surface where you are across every area of your life, what drives you, and what your life purpose is. Much of what you assumed was your purpose turns out to have been inherited, not chosen. The patterns that shape your decisions are ones you have never named. Once you name them, they shift.
In each session, you bring what is alive. A decision you are avoiding, a pattern you keep repeating, something you noticed but cannot name yet. By the end, you see it clearly and know what to do next.
Format: A three month programme with two sessions per month. The first sessions map your purpose, values, and patterns. Everything that follows builds from what you uncover.
"I have been surprised by the answers that come from within me, insights I did not realise I had until her questions brought them out. I have achieved more in the last three months than in the previous eight."
Grant F.
"The moment I understood that I can change things rather than simply respond to them, everything shifted."
The ALIGN Method is the framework that underpins this work. A five-stage process developed from Eri's own experience and her training in NLP and transformational coaching. Each engagement draws on the stages that are most relevant to you.
A
Awaken
Reconnect with the part of you that has been quiet for too long, and open awareness to something deeper still.
L
Listen
Reduce external noise and turn inward. Pay attention to what feels meaningful, right, or off, beyond roles, responsibilities, and external expectations.
I
Integrate
Bring together what you know on the surface and what you feel more deeply beneath it. Close the gap between how you appear and what is true for you.
G
Grow
Turn insight into direction. Begin making your own choices and taking actions that reflect who you are becoming, not who you were expected to be.
N
Nurture
Embody this new way of being through everyday choices, so it becomes natural, consistent, and truly yours.
Not sure where to start?
Begin with a free 25-minute consultation.
A focused conversation to explore what is possible. Come curious, leave with clarity.
Large-scale change succeeds when people are brought with it.
You know what needs to change. The harder question is how to bring people with you. That is where most transformation programmes stall, not in the design, but in the human experience of change.
What Eri offers
Change Management and Transformation Advisory
You are leading a transformation programme, managing an organisational redesign, or bringing your people through a significant shift. You have the strategy. The harder question is whether your people will move with it. Project leads, HR leaders, and business heads bring me in when they need someone who understands the human side of change as well as the structural side. I work with your team to close the gap between what is planned and what is lived.
Typical engagements include
Change impact and readiness assessments
Stakeholder engagement and alignment strategy
Change governance design and delivery oversight
Leadership coaching and capability building through change
Facilitated workshops for teams navigating transformation
Eri works in
English and Japanese. On-site, hybrid, or remote. Based in Switzerland, available internationally.
On a project or advisory basis, for both short-term and longer-term engagements.
Experience
A track record built inside the industries I serve.
You need someone who has sat inside the organisations you are describing. Over 25 years I have held senior change and transformation roles at Swiss Re, PartnerRe, Zurich Insurance Group, Galytix, Expedia and Swissôtel Management. I understand the culture, the language, and the pressures of complex organisations because I have worked inside them.
Certifications and credentials
Executive MBA, IMDChange Practitioner, ProsciNLP Master Coach and Trainer
Design and Lead Change GmbH, represented by Eri Ishikawa, Buchberg, Switzerland. Email: eri@eriishikawa.com. This website is operated in accordance with the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (revFADP/nDSG), effective 1 September 2023, and, where applicable, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
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