Guiding transformation
Engaging all members is a challenge. As an experienced host, advisor and facilitator I offer guidance and leadership through this process. As a strategic event designer and executive coach for workshops, conferences and team buildings, Salonhostings clients benefit from my best practice which was gained through year long experience in the areas of performance management and participation.
I design and support several Communities of Practice world wide, both on-line and off-line. Together with my team I model and facilitate customised concepts to enable sustainable implementation of processes and change within our clients organisations.


Sample Projects
Testimonials
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Arch. DI Daniel Fügenschuh
Vice president Federal Chamber of Civil Engineers and architectsOur goal was to enable a dialogue and exchange among experts across borders. We succeeded brilliantly, despite or perhaps because of the online format, under the highly competent leadership of Ursula Hillbrand and her team, we succeeded brilliantly. Our participants actively contributed throughout the day and stayed in the digital aperitif rooms for a cultivated exchange, like at a face-to-face conference. We are exited.
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Karlheinz Beer
Architekt BDA & Urban planningBaukultur does not stop at borders. Competitions and transparent award procedures ensure diversity, innovation and sustainability in the planning and construction process. With our Interreg project, we have developped and promoted an intensive dialogue in the “neighborhood”.
Thanks to your creative thinking, we were able to create a a good base for the best from the respective regions can enter our culture of award procedures. Many thanks to Ursula Hillbrand and her team for the successful and insightful organisation and implementation of our 1st cross-border expert symposium. -
George Pòr
President at Campus Co-EvolveAs our client in the European Commission, her dedication to create a warm and safe space of authentic human relations in a highly hierarchical workplace, and generate a continually increasing value to both the organization and community members, was the biggest factor in accomplishing our mission.
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Franco Accordino
Head of Unit “Investement in High-Capacity Networks” at European CommissionDedicated mentor and coach, helped me discovering new ways to engage with stakeholders and make sense of their collective intelligence. She masters numerous techniques to harness knowledge, from art of brainstorming to mind mapping, and combines them into the right mix of tools to make conversations meaningful and enjoyable. If you want to design a complex process to achieve a policy or business purpose, shared or personal, Ursula is the right person to ask for!
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Prof. Dr. Karel Velle
Director-general of the Belgian National Archives and the State Archives in the Provinces, Part-time associated Professor at Universiteit GentIn each organisation, personnel changes occur continuously; some colleagues only stay for a short while, others develop their whole career at the same organisation. It is of key importance for colleagues to regularly meet and to be given the opportunity to get to know each other, to exchange ideas, across all kinds of boundaries (geographical, language etc.).
In order to initiate, organise and conduct a dialogue, we called upon Ms. Ursula Hillbrand.I am particularly pleased with our collaboration. It was obvious right from the beginning that Ursula has a lot of professional experience in the coaching of groups, but there is much more: She has phantastic personal charisma, lots of empathy and she manages to give collaborators a vision and to make them believe in the future.
I can highly recommend Ursula to all managers who want to give their collaborators time and space to meet each other and to think about the future of the organisation. -
Juanita Brown
Co-Founder, The World CafeUrsula has a unique capacity to hold a whole system lens, while simultaneously cultivating the personal and professional leadership skills at the team level that are also needed to help shape positive futures. Her use of dialogue and other participatory approaches for honouring multiple perspectives provides pathways for accessing both collaborative intelligence and wise action. In these challenging times, Ursula’s special gifts are sorely needed and I value them greatly.
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Juliane Bogner-Strauss
Former Federal Minister for Women, Families and YouthThe combination of your open personality and determined aim to enable successful conversations and exchange among the participants made all the difference.
We also appreciated your diligence in designing strategic questions and documenting outcomes. In addition, you were available for any detailed questions by the organising team, which made my services very confident throughout the preparation process and the event itself. -
Simon V. Mathis
PhD Candidate at the University of Cambridge, and Head of Sustainability at Visium SAUrsula is an extraordinary leadership trainer and mentor. I have had the pleasure to learn from and work with Ursula in a professional and personal context for almost a decade. Under her mentorship, I learned how create the conditions for meaningful dialogue in teams and have seen such “hosted” conversations catalyse positive change in business and academia. Over the years, I have seen Ursula transform teams from diverse backgrounds spanning public policy to industry through the principles of meaningful dialogue.
I regularly apply the principles I learned from Ursula in my professional life and saw them enable effective co-creation in the board room, when I worked as management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, and more recently in research and teaching at the University of Cambridge.
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Heidelinde Adensam
Head of Department Energy Efficiency and Buildings, Federal Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and TechnologyThe Efficiency Act affects many different stakeholder groups and we had great respect for the evaluation of this controversial law. In the course of many workshops and discussion rounds with the support of Ms. Hillbrand, it was possible to work out the core problems and identify concrete needs for change. At the end of the process, not all interest groups were of the same opinion, but solutions could be identified to balance interests.
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Jürgen Schneider
Head of Directorate General VI – Climate Action and Energy at Federal Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and TechnologyThe Efficiency Act affects many different stakeholder groups and we had great respect for the evaluation of this controversial law. In the course of many workshops and discussion rounds with the support of Ms. Hillbrand, it was possible to work out the core problems and identify concrete needs for change. At the end of the process, not all interest groups were of the same opinion, but solutions could be identified to balance interests.
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Sophia Kircher
Vice-President of the Tyrolean ParliamentIt was very important to the Tyrolean Parliament to enable the citizens of Tyrol to participate in the brainstorming around the Conference on the Future of Europe. Due to the challenges caused by the corona pandemic, we had to develop a new, innovative and participatory format for the dialogue – Ursula Hillbrand and her team supported us in this in a very professional manner.
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Arch. DI Daniel Fügenschuh
Vice president Federal Chamber of Civil Engineers and architectsOur goal was to enable a dialogue and exchange among experts across borders. We succeeded brilliantly, despite or perhaps because of the online format, under the highly competent leadership of Ursula Hillbrand and her team, we succeeded brilliantly. Our participants actively contributed throughout the day and stayed in the digital aperitif rooms for a cultivated exchange, like at a face-to-face conference. We are exited.