Location: Brussels, Belgium

Originally from the Netherlands, Gaston Schmitz has work experience in over 30 countries across a diverse range of industries  including multinationals and rapidly growing startups. Having set up multiple companies, he is one of the partners at the Asian Leadership institute, Asia’s longest established executive coaching company, where he runs the startup practice.

After having coached senior executives at Fortune 500 companies, he is now primarily active in the startup ecosystem; he is the lead founder coach for xto10x, and he has coached the founders of 60+ tech startups including 15+ founders of unicorns. 

Gaston holds a double master’s degree in international business and advanced development studies. He is an advocate for conscious capitalism, an active entrepreneur, and a board member of several non-profits. Gaston began to study mindfulness in 2005, and it has been a central part of his professional and personal life ever since. He moved to Asia in 2008 and recently returned back to Belgium where he lives with his wife and two sons.

His diverse work experience allows him to listen deeply without judgment and to propose valuable new perspectives, especially to fast-growing companies. He has a deep and demonstrated commitment to helping groups discover and consciously shift their own limiting patterns or team dysfunctions. 

His goal is to have executives and teams ‘reinvent themselves’ regularly in order to provide the best possible match with what an evolving organisation needs. Besides individual work, he facilitates executive team journeys to enable a team to get to next levels of trust, accountability, and performance. 

Gaston is fluent in Dutch, English, French and understands German. Passionate about rock climbing, free diving, slacklining, and having trekked the 5-month Great Himalaya Trail, he knows how to bring clients to their growth edge. He also leads a weekly Zen meditation group and has gone through many silent retreats to deeply understand how the mind works, starting with himself.