This is a very special episode of The Developmental, featuring two adult development experts who are also best friends. They will open up the inner sanctum of their 12-year friendship to explore why and how it has transformed each of them, and what other people might learn from it all. This is an episode filled with personal life stories, but also one grounded in a research-based framework on transformative relationships. The story of one friendship will illuminate how this framework actually works and how you might bring it to life in your own friendships or other meaningful relationships.

Veronica Brejan is Managing Partner at NeuroMindfulness® Institute and a former international HR Director. Veronica held top HR positions in London, Paris and Eastern Europe: Chief People Officer Europe (Pizza Hut, Yum! Brands), Global Head of Talent (Vodafone), and internal HR advisor roles in KPMG, Cargill and Alstom. Her areas of expertise are leadership development, executive coaching, talent strategy and organizational culture.

Veronica holds an EMBA from the Maastricht School of Management and Master in Business Communication. She is an ICF-certified executive coach (ACC), holding certifications from Barrett Values Center (Evolutionary Coaching) and the Institute of Human Excellence founded by Sir John Whitmore (Transpersonal Coaching). She is also a trained Yoga teacher and accredited Practitioner of NLP, Timeline Therapy and Hypnotherapy with the American Board of NLP.

Veronica and Alis have been best friends for 12 years. Their career paths have intersected, then diverged in complementary ways. Their life paths have been at times uncannily similar, and at other times radically different. They have lived in the same city, then in different countries and finally on different continents for years, and discovered how to keep friendship alive over long distances. They have been through ups and downs - separately and together - and have learnt how to be there for eachother not when it's easy, but most of all when it's hard. They almost lost their friendship, only to recover it stronger than ever before.

Join them for the story of five seasons of friendship and an exploration of five ingredients of developmental relationships.

Read more about the five ingredients framework in Alis’ PhD Dissertation. A dedicated article on this topic will follow soon here, on the VDI website.