I am back after a 17-day trip to 4 different countries.
The trip started in Surinam, a small country just north of Brazil. Together with one of our Dutch partners, Gea Peper of The Happiness Bureau, I did a workshop for an HR network.
Surinam is currently facing an economic crisis, so we focused especially on how to create happiness at work in tough times. We were also guests on a Surinamese TV show called Panorama.
After that Gea and I flew on to Curacao in the Caribbean where we did another workshop for HR leaders.
The workshop ended with balloons :) We also did an interview with Dolfijn FM who have their studio right on the beach. Awesome! And of course there was time for a little bit of sightseeing. Curaco used to be a Dutch colony, so the capital Willemstad basically looks like Amsterdam in the Caribbeans.
From curacao I flew to New York City, where I met up with my awesome coworker Arlette to lead our 4th international Woohoo Inc Academy.
9 wonderful people from different US companies had signed up for the 3-day Academy and as far as we can tell from their feedback, everyone had a blast and learned a lot. The Academy included a visit to Next Jump, one of the happiest workplaces we know, and some sightseeing, including a guided tour of Grand Central Terminal and a cruise on the East River.
And following that I flew to Dubai to speak at the 18th Global Women in Leadership Forum, where I did the opening keynote on day 2 and particularly made the point that if we want to create happier workplaces, we need more women in leadership positions.
Here are some reactions from twitter:
RT becbarry: Great kick off to day2 of WIL_Forum by happiness guru alexkjerulf #woohoo! #high5 #GWEF16 woohooinc pic.twitter.com/tnMy1TcEoO
— Mitren Chinoy (@nertim) October 25, 2016
@alexkjerulf you have truly inspired us today. Thank You! @WIL_Forum
— ???? ?????? (@kreidiehr) October 25, 2016
An electric start to the day with @alexkjerulf on #happiness and #leadership. #GWEF16 pic.twitter.com/globR2O8EZ
— Charlotte Chédeville (@ChaChedeville) October 25, 2016
And then I flew home. My internal clock is so fried, I’m not even sure I have jetlag at all.
But I’m also incredibly encouraged to once again have had the chance to spread the gospel of happiness at work in some new countries and to find so many like-minded people all over the world who agree that this is an incredibly important topic that businesses need to act on.
In fact, this trip brings the total number of countries we’ve spoken in to 41. Here’s the complete list:
- Antigua
- Bahamas
- Bulgaria
- Chile
- Croatia
- Curaçao
- Czech Republic
- Denmark
- Dominican Republic
- Estonia
- France
- Germany
- Greenland
- Guatemala
- Iceland
- India
- Ireland
- Italy
- Japan
- Israel
- Kuwait
- Luxembourg
- Netherlands
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Russia
- Serbia
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- South Africa
- Spain
- Sri Lanka
- Suriname
- Sweden
- ?Switzerland
- Turkey
- United Arab Emirates
- United Kingdom
- USA
That’s awesome! If more people would learn they can choose to be happy in the workplace as well as in their personal lives, the world would be a much better place. Thank you for what you do.