Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken

Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken has worked on international development and civil society issues for 30 years, in practice, in academia, and as an independent consultant. Before launching her independent consulting practice, Five Oaks Consulting, Tosca was the Director of the Transnational NGO Initiative at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, USA. There, Tosca focused on the governance, leadership, and effectiveness of INGOs, directed the TNGO Leadership Institute, and advised major NGOs on change management.

Tosca has 4 key service offers: 1/ Leadership development, incl. leadership training, individual and team coaching. Tosca is certified in team coachig by the renowned global team coaching company Corentus. Tosca has designed and delivered 25+ NGO leadership development training programs; 2/ Change management advise; 3/ Organizational and Governance Effectiveness Reviews; and 4/ Facilitation. As Principal Consultant at Five Oaks Consulting, Tosca helps senior INGO leaders turbocharge their ability to lead dramatic and useful change. Tosca is a public thought leader, speaker and co-author of the book 'Between Power and Irrelevance: the Future of Transnational NGOs' (Oxford University Press, 2020). She is also the host of the podcast NGO Soul+Strategy. Tosca, together with Ahmed Abdelhakim Hachelaf hosts a course on Virtual Team Leadership.

At the start of her career, Tosca worked as an international development practitioner for a European think tank, the World Bank, a US INGO, and the United Nations. Tosca, a native from the Netherlands with dual nationality (US), speaks Dutch and English and has a working knowledge of French and Vietnamese as well. She lives in Upstate New York in the USA.

As a consultant, Tosca supports leaders of NGOs and foundations in guiding complex organizational change management journeys, leadership development and executive coaching needs, and organizational culture change processes. She also enjoys supporting organizations in strengthening their organizational equity, diversity and inclusion strategies, virtual team leadership skill-building, and in the areas of gender and leadership as well as feminist leadership approaches.

Examples of past clients:

-- Amnesty International

-- Health in Harmony

-- Asylum Access

-- Church World Service

-- Transparency International

-- Transparency and Accountability Initiative

-- Humentum

-- World Vision International

-- Oxfam International

-- Save the Children

-- Trickle Up

-- Heifer International

-- ActionAid International

-- Keystone Human Services International

-- Population Council

-- Greenpeace

-- and many others