People Process Interviews: Thomas Veeman

What this episode covers

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the People Processes podcast. I'm your host, Rhamy Alejeal, and I am really excited today to bring you Thomas Veeman. The co-founder of Conversari Global. They upgrade people for the future of work. Thomas has worked in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, India, and Thailand. He's lived in Mexico City since 2012. He draws on his international background to teach executive courses on emotional and cultural intelligence. Thomas is especially passionate about using experiential and narrative methods to help teams bridge cultural and communication divides. I'm excited to have you on here, Thomas. The pleasure is mine as well, Rhamy. Well, Thomas, the first question I ask all of our guests, you know, not everybody dresses up as a kid for as an HR person or a business owner. It's not the most common life choices that get us here. How did you wind up where you are now? How did you get into this crazy world? Well, that's a great question and it's a long story. As a kid, I certainly never thought I would do anything related to business. Actually, I grew up moving back and forth between Switzerland and the United States. My mom's Swiss and my father's an American. And I think it's kind of like that was the era before you had cell phones. But if we imagine it in today's world, it's kind of like every year I had to switch the SIM card in my brain to work with a different set of values, a different set of rules for how to behave. That was just normal to me. I learned later on and even growing up that's not necessarily normal for everyone else. If I fast forward, I thought i was going to be a pilot because pilots, they travel a lot and that would allow me to do that. Yeah. I didn't become a pilot. If I fast forward, several years, later on after college where I studied in the U S. I Had been going to Switzerland and I studied in Thailand as well. My first real job in which I got to see a way to apply more of myself than just a job working the forests of Oregon. And later as in wilderness therapy in Arizona. And through that work when I really got to see was the beauty of it. Of people learning not only something that they can do to make themselves more effective, because the whole job and being effective as a job wasn't very compelling to me as something to do with your life growing up. But when I saw him here, these were practical lessons that you learned. You've figured out, if we use this kind of plant in this way. If you use your effort to make this tool, then you get these skills that make your life happier and getting to be part of that and seeing that within people kind of switch to chip for me and said, “you know what, that's something I need to find a way to do with my life.” Wow. What an interesting background. Just to start with, but then to have those experiences after college. And so you said, all right, this kind of work moves me. It's something I could see myself doing. There is great value in it. How did you go from that to co-founding an incredibly successful company? Yeah, the road was interesting. From working in wilderness therapy, I realized, if I'm going to take this step forward in my career, what could I do if I had a family or to be able to buy a house and afford a life. I gotta pay those bills, right? Meet the practical requirements of life. Well, the next step was either go into the therapeutic side. So to be a therapist, a masters in psychology now at the time, life is complicated. So I was dating a woman in Monterrey, Mexico. And through that long distance relationship we had to figure out well to keep this relationship a chance, where do I go? She worked for the United Nations here in Mexico City, so she couldn't move. I had to come here. So I thought, well, what am I going to do that's relevant? Professionally, if I come to Mexico City. And I found this great program, Masters in Counseling Psychology that I could do here, that brought me...