Welcome! My name is Hester Macrander, and my main activity is to provide trainings and lectures in and from “Connecting Communication,” to provide mediations, and train mediators. (I don’t call it Nonviolent Communication because this defines what it is not. So I prefer: “Connecting.”)

I am originally educated as a theatre director, theatre teacher, and teacher in Dutch language. In 2006, I started Connecting Communication, and in 2016 I became an internationally certified trainer. I have my own training and mediation studio, and I translated the book by Liv Larsson, A Helping Hand, Mediation with Nonviolent Communication, into Dutch.

In the Netherlands I work closely with two other certified trainers. With Helmie Willems, I facilitate a trainings studio, offering several trainings including an annual training group called The Art of Living. With co-worker Eva Maria Schneijderberg, I offer a Trainer Personal Development program to educate new trainers based on Connecting Communication. We also offer a weeklong summer workshop each year.

I also teach creative workshops, theatre, and writing. Occasionally, I work as a moderator. I like to write and hope to publish a book on how to apply Connecting Communication in the different fields of society. It seems like a lot, but everything I do comes from the same tube: theatre, language, behavior, communication!