Welcome to my story!

My name is Nadja El Fertasi, I'm based in Brussels, Belgium, and I work with STEM leaders to build human resilience during challenging times with emotional intelligence.

I spent two decades at NATO, the world's largest security and crisis management organization, working with brilliant scientists, engineers, IT professionals, academics, and cyber security experts from over 40 nationalities across the civil-military sector. We developed capability and technology programs that enabled, protected, and secured NATO's digital footprint across the transatlantic region.

Throughout my career, I saw the impact of both great and poor leadership. Great leaders transformed adversity into opportunity, treated people as individuals rather than numbers, and led others through challenges with high levels of emotional intelligence. In contrast, I saw high-performing teams turn into ones that burned out, left for better opportunities, or stopped performing altogether due to leaders who lacked emotional intelligence.

That's why I left NATO to pursue my dream of building human resilience with our emotional intelligence toolkit. High levels of preparedness, resilience, and readiness within an organization can be effectively achieved by incorporating the EQ tools of Self-Perception, Self-Expression, Interpersonal, Decision Making, and Stress Management. By leveraging these competencies, organizations can enhance their capacity to mitigate risks and effectively respond to disruptions.

At Thrive with EQ, we're on a mission to become the global brand in emotional intelligence, solving leadership challenges in cyber and digitization. My vision is to leave a legacy for future generations and build a workplace that connects people with different maps of the world through emotional intelligence.

I design and facilitate resilience and readiness strategies, leveraging the tested scientific emotional intelligence model EQ-i 2.0 and the universally applied character strengths surveyed by the Values in Action Character Institute.

My credentials in emotional intelligence include training with leading experts in the field, and I speak Dutch, English, French, and have a good understanding of Italian and German. I'm an alumna of the 2018 German Marshall Fund Marshall Memorial Fellowship program, a postgraduate from the University of Cambridge in International Relations, and Co-Chair of the largest side event of the GLOBSEC 2019 Bratislava Forum.

In November 2020, I led the regional cyber leadership approach webinars for the World Savings Banking Institute (WSBI), a global initiative with partners such as Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) and Cyber Fin Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Let's connect and continue your journey of emotional intelligence with Thrive with EQ!

My Core Values 

These are my values in life,  which is my Northern Star on which Thrive with EQ is founded.