About us
Frank van Velthoven
Frank van Velthoven is an experienced Addiction-Therapist. He has been working in the field of addiction-care since 2000. At first for a large organization, since 2013 as a freelancer.
Next to working as an Addiction-Therapist, Counselor and Senior-Counselor, Frank has assisted in developing new treatments, and offers in-house addiction care training to psychologists and therapists. He is currently writing a workbook for a large addiction-care facility.
Next to his work as a Counselor and Coach, Frank is passionate about making music, meditation and Tibetan Buddhism.
Collette Pestana
Collette is a counselor and recovery coach from Johannesburg, South-Africa. She has been running a safehouse for the last 15 years and has recently sold her business and moved to Lisbon, Portugal.
She is a passionate coach who is determined to making recovery and recovery coaching more available.
Collette is currently setting up her own practice in Lisbon and is excited about joining the Recovery Specialists Amsterdam team.
René Fonck
René Fonck has a lot of experience in coaching clients to make daily changes in their lives. Not necessarily dramatic or revolutionary ones, but enabling them to open up to what remained unnoticed.
René believes that often our clients are generally unfamiliar with the difference between underlying processes and their manifestations. He provides his clients with insight in these dynamics and tries to teach them skills such as acceptance, honesty and humility. This may lead to calm, self-actualisation, or whatever the client desires.
René has been trained as an Addiction Counselor by dr. Robert Lefever in England, has an MSc in Psychotherapy and has worked as a Psychologist in The Netherlands.
Kate Damad
Kate Damad moved with her family to Antwerp in 2017, from Cape Town, South-Africa. She has worked as a Counselor in an aftercare facility, and has an honors degree in Psychology from the University of South-Africa.
Kate is a Recovery Coach and a Counselor, and loves the process of coaching her clients into independent, strong and free individuals.
She is excited to be able to do the work she loves in a foreign country, and to coach people who are living abroad, away from their own country. Kate is thrilled to see the Recovery Coaching movement grow and expand the way it is doing today, and feels grateful to be a part of that movement.
Evyan Donch
Evyan Donch is an American Recovery Coach living in Rome, Italy. She is running her own coaching business since a couple of years, and is passionate about this new area of addiction-care.
She loves to apply the latest international methodologies for helping people in the addiction and behavioral health fields.
Evyan is an important force in the development of the international Recovery Specialist Networks, and is also involved in the organisations EARS, the European Association of Recovery Specialists, and IRSI, International Recovery Specialists Institute.
Tako Seelemann
Tako Seelemann has been involved in Recovery Coaching since 2011. He studied at the Integral Coaching Center and has been running a Halfway House, both in Cape Town, South-Africa. After returning to The Netherlands he has been involved with different coaching organisations.
He is passionate about the expanding world of recovery and Coaching, and the insights and development that appear in this field. He also loves his work as a Re-integration Coach, helping people who have finished treatment to get back into the workfield.
Zachary Schoenhut
Zachary’s interest in helping others who struggle with a variety of addictions has led him to pursue multiple positions within the recovery field since 2013. He is now a Certified International Recovery Specialist based in Brussels and working throughout Europe.
He is passionate about education, helping those who desire to obtain certificates, degrees, et cetera.
Alongside his recovery coaching, Zachary is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and researcher. He maintains a sculpture practice at his atelier.