The professional landscape is shifting.
Career Change is more revelant than ever. Several forces are converging.
On the one hand, the world is changing faster than ever. Technological disruption, geopolitical tensions and market consolidations create both opportunities and challenges. Roles disappear. New roles emerge. Skills shift. You ask yourself: Will my job still exist tomorrow? Will my skills still be relevant?
At the same time, careers are becoming longer and people invest more in personal development. That leads to a another reflection: Does my job still fit with who I have become and what I expect of my future career?
Together, these forces makes us move away from one-career-for-life towards careers in phases.
The question is no longer if your career will change, but how consciously you will navigate that change.
The answer?
How do you move from one career phase to the next?
The answer is the core of Bärbel Buyse’s keynote contributions: a step-by-step approach to shape a new career that fits who you have become in the world of tomorrow, with practical insights and real-life examples.
After experiencing her own career tipping point, she explored research, studied real-life cases and connected insights from different fields into one coherent framework. The result is the 8-step Roadmap to guide a career change and is the backbone of her book Reshape Your Career.
Keynote topics
Reshape Your Career
How do you turn a tipping point, forced or chosen, into a new professional chapter?
For professionals facing imposed or voluntary career change. How do you navigate a full career redesign, not just a job switch? Bridging real-life experience with a guiding roadmap into practical insights and the pitfalls to avoid.
Audience: Professionals, entrepreneurs, outplacement, HR
Theme: Career change, career management, professional reinvention
Every Ending is a New Beginning
When the Future of Your Company Is No Longer Your Career Future
For entrepreneurs considering succession, exit or a new professional chapter. How do you reshape your own career when the future of your company and your personal future no longer follow the same path?
Audience: Entrepreneurs, investors, family business leaders
Theme: Entrepreneurship, leadership, career change
When Your Professional Title Is Your Identity
How do you reinvent your identity when your professional role changes?
For visible professionals with strong role identities such as doctors, lawyers, politicians, entrepreneurs and executives. How do you navigate radical career change, forced or chosen, when identity itself is at stake?
Audience: Sector-specific groups, entrepreneurs, professionals
Theme: Work identity, career change, professional reinvention
Becoming a Meaningful Wing(wo)man in Career Change
How can you support others through professional career changes?
For HR professionals, leaders, mentors and coaches. In times of longer careers, external disruption, polyworking and hybrid career paths: What role can you play in helping others navigate career change?
Audience: HR leaders, executives, mentors, coaches, HR education
Theme: Career change, career coach, leadership
Shaping Your First Career
How do you consciously design your professional life from the start?
For young professionals and final-year students. How can you build step by step a first professional chapter more consciously?
Audience: Universities, business schools, higher education, young talent programmes
Theme: Career ownership, career management, professional development
Preparing for the New Career Reality
How do organisations prepare for careers that no longer follow one straight line?
For Organisations & Leadership Teams. Technology disrupts. Organisations restructure. Careers take longer. How do leaders prepare talent for multi-phase careers and a professional future shaped by continuous change?
Audience: Senior leadership, HR leaders, professional organisations
Theme: : Leadership, future of work, career management
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Selected Speakings
In-depth Career Change
Reshape Your Career at life’s tipping points
Careers today no longer follow one straight line. Technological disruption, organisational shifts, longer working lives and our own personal development increasingly turn careers into a sequence of phases.
But how do you make an in-depth career change, chosen or forced?
Audience: business, industry, government, IT and consultancy professionals.
Theme: Career Change
ADM on the spot @ ADM
Keynote Bärbel Buyse (Dutch)
Shape your First Career as Entrepreneur
An interactive evening with women who had recently started their entrepreneurial journey or were considering taking their first steps towards entrepreneurship.
The panel discussion focused on lessons learned and practical tips for starting a business. My contribution highlighted the courage to explore new paths “You win or you learn, but you never fail” while embracing an entrepreneurial mindset.
In the smaller reflection groups afterwards, we explored the importance of shaping your entrepreneurial journey around both your business needs and who you are. From your personal energy drivers and priorities towards financial risk to choosing a sector, deciding whether to start alone or with a business partner and shaping your own role in the business.
Organisation: “Inspiratie Café” by Vrouwenet, Artemis, Liantis
Audience: Female Entrepreneurs
Theme: Starting as an Entrepreneur
Should I Stay or Should I go?
An interactive session for business owners considering the future transfer or sale of their company.
While preparing a business for transfer is essential, how does this impact the entrepreneur ?
Through the Reshape Your Career framework, the session explores the personal side of business succession: whether to stay involved or step away, how to deal with a long and intense closing period, how to rethink your professional identity beyond the business and how to shape a next professional chapter step by step.
With real-life examples, practical tips and common pitfalls to avoid, the testimonial offers concrete insights to help entrepreneurs navigate this important transition.
www.voka.be/west-vlaanderen/opleidingen/opvolging-en-overname/transfer-readiness-2026-2027
Organisation: Transfer Readiness by VOKA
Audience: Entrepreneurs
Theme: Business Transfer
Reshape Your Career
How do you make an in-depth career change? It starts with your Tipping Point.
A Tipping Point is the moment when your current career path can no longer continue as it is. Sometimes you make that decision yourself. Sometimes circumstances make it for you.
During the official launch of Reshape Your Career at Vlerick Business School, this became one of the strongest reflections in the panel discussion: career tipping points can emerge in very different ways.
The book offers an 8-step roadmap to help you move from that moment of change toward a next professional chapter, shaped with clarity, intent and your own unique direction.
Introduction: Niels L.K. Janssens
Panel: Veroniek De Schamphelaere Rudy Denutte Trui Van der Cruyssen
Leadership and Ownership Transition
Every ending is a new beginning
Career change at entrepreneurial tipping points.
Audience: Entrepreneurs
Theme: Change
Entrepreneurship Academy @ Vlerick Business School
Keynote Bärbel Buyse & Prof. Yannick Dillen (Dutch)
