Location: Brussels, Belgium

Originally from the Netherlands, Gaston Schmitz has work experience in over 30 countries across a diverse range of industries and businesses, including multinationals and rapidly growing start-ups. He is one of the partners at the Asian Leadership institute, Asia’s longest established executive coaching practice. 

Besides having coached senior executives at Fortune 500 companies, he is primarily active in the tech start-up world. He is the main founder coach for xto10x, and he has coached over 50 founders of Indian tech start-up from early stage and over a dozen unicorn founders. 

Gaston holds a double master’s degrees 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. In 2005 Gaston started studying mindfulness alongside his work. His studies remain central to his life and are a key aspect of his mindful coaching approach. Gaston 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 months Great Himalaya Trail, he knows how to bring clients to their growth edge. He also leads a weekly Zen meditation group and uses his own mind as a regular experimental ground.