Hi, I’m Berry Kruijning

My Journey

I’ve spent more than 50 years on the water. I took my first sailing trip at age 7 in the Netherlands, and by the time I was 14, I was already offshore, sailing to Norway. The water has always been where I feel most alive — most present, most myself.

For over 20 years, I’ve worked as a leadership and communication coach — helping leaders find their voice, navigate change, transitions and difficult conversations, and show up with confidence, especially when it matters most. And all that time, I was also sailing.

For a long time, these felt like two separate lives.

What brought them together was noticing the overlap in my work: confidence. Inviting women onto a boat felt effortless in a way that filling a leadership workshop never did — because it wasn’t a program I was selling. It was an experience I was sharing. And that’s where things shift.

I’ve lived that myself. Organizing my first Greece flotilla in 2025 was well outside my comfort zone. I hired a local captain I trusted to carry part of the load — because I’ve learned that building confidence doesn’t mean doing it alone. It means finding a stretch goal and working towards it. It means knowing when to ask for help so you can keep growing. I honor that struggle. It’s part of the journey.

I am a USCG Captain, a certified ASA sailing instructor, and a Professional Certified Coach with several certifications. I’ve sailed a variety of boats, started on ponds and lakes and expanded my comfort zone to seas and oceans. I was lucky enough to build confidence on the North Sea, the Atlantic, the Salish Sea, the Columbia River, and the Ionian Sea near Greece. I’ve done my own work — years of personal and spiritual development, navigating life transitions and adversity, learning to trust myself when conditions weren’t ideal.

My superpower, people tell me, is calmness. And a kind of directness that doesn’t push — it invites.

On a boat, patterns show up fast. The women I work with are often accomplished and deeply capable — and also their own harshest critics. They self-edit, hold back in critical moments, and carry beliefs about themselves that say: not yet, not me, not this. That voice gets loudest in moments of change — when life shifts underneath you and the old certainties no longer hold.

On land, those patterns can hide. On the water, they can’t. The boat, the wind, the elements demand your full presence — and in that demand, how you show up becomes impossible to ignore.

This is the philosophy behind everything I do: the way we do one thing, we do everything. What happens at the helm is rarely just about sailing.

My role is to stand beside you in those moments. To create enough safety that taking a risk feels possible. And to help you reflect: how am I showing up right now — and where else in my life does this show up? That moment when something that felt completely out of reach suddenly becomes attainable — just by deciding to try — is where the real learning lives.

That is why Happy at the Helm exists. Because every woman belongs at the helm — and sometimes it just takes a different environment to see what was already there.

Come find out.