Ursula Hillbrand

I am an experienced process designer, skilful and subtle host, coach, community builder and pioneer of collaborative practices. For over two decades, I have been supporting teams and individuals at the highest levels of business, politics, non-profit organisations and civil society.

My clients come to me when they need to go deeper and further in their work than they are able to go alone. They are often leaders seeking a shift or transformation – at an individual, team or organisational level – with tangible, reliable results they can build on.

All my life I have been fascinated with locating and understanding the source of things, as well as the subtle – or not so subtle – cultures, rules and structures that govern groups and individuals. These early inquiries led me to seek out a variety of lived experience working with hierarchy and collaboration. As a result of these experiences – combined with my natural way of being – I bring a diplomatic, gracious and feminine tone to all of my work.

I began my career in an academic institution, as a study assistant at a faculty of law, going on to train as a lawyer. I also studied university courses in languages and art history, seasoned with lighter summer placements hosting leisure tours across Europe. After obtaining my Masters in Law I spent some time working inside the Austrian legal system and Government, and later expanded my political horizons to work for the European Commission as a policy expert.

A formal training in emergent and collaborative processes within the Art of Hosting community of practice, gave me a language and structure for the organic ways of working I had developed across my diverse experiences with groups. I was present at the birth of the Art of Hosting Communities of Practice within the European Commission and worked with others to evolve and explore the role for transformative leadership and emergent practice within large, complex institutions. Alongside this, I established several communities of practice internationally.

I pioneered the Art of Hosting in Austria, and led the first team to initiate an online version of the core three-day immersive Art of Hosting training. I have a natural inclination towards pioneering work, pushing existing boundaries to bring innovative, collaborative practices into new spaces where they are being called for.

Since 2017 I have been on sabbatical from the European Commission and moved with my husband and three daughters to a family house in Bregenz, Austria where I had spent the summers of my youth – a space of recreation and connection. Here we pursued our love of hosting and opened a brasserie – following in the footsteps of my great grandmother who opened a restaurant there a hundred years earlier. – in addition to the already existing Bregenzer Salon. The salon was founded in 2010 using a concept to take place at different venues to promote dialogue culture and innovative, collaborative working. I delight in hosting intimate salon gatherings for both social and professional groups, alongside my international facilitation, training and coaching work.

Today my professional practice represents an elegant synthesis of both traditional and innovative approaches to collaborative group work. I regularly facilitate and host events, conferences and seminars on and offline. I also train teams in collaborative, emergent practices, support women and men in leadership, and coach facilitators and leaders to become hosts. I continue to exercise my passion for community building, supporting the establishment of Communities of Practice across a variety of sectors and geographies.

All Testimonials

George Pòr

President at Campus Co-Evolve

As 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.
Franco Accordino

Head of Unit “Investement in High-Capacity Networks” at European Commission

Dedicated 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!
Arch. DI Daniel Fügenschuh

Vice president Federal Chamber of Civil Engineers and architects

Our 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.
Marjut Falkstedt

Secretary General of the European Investment Bank

We asked Ursula Hillbrand to help us work with the different leadership concepts in our management teams including executives. Her diplomatic way of working accepts different styles and cultures elegantly, and still she smartly invites everyone in the room to create a shared purpose, which she was able to hold for us from the background in a sustainable way through a longer process. We also have a great experience of an away day she designed and facilitated for my staff. She has a great talent to work with the non-manifested potential of a group and make it visible.
Juanita Brown

Co-Founder, The World Cafe

Ursula 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.
Juliane Bogner-Strauss

Former Federal Minister for Women, Families and Youth

The 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 SA

Ursula 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.
Heidelinde Adensam

Head of Department Energy Efficiency and Buildings, Federal Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology

The 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.
Jürgen Schneider

Head of Directorate General VI – Climate Action and Energy at Federal Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology

The 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.