We are a nonprofit catalysing a healthy work culture in the media industry globally by placing well-being and mental health as a core business strategy and value. Our vision is driven by our belief that to sustain quality journalism, we need mentally healthy journalists.
With consultancies, training, coaching and other awareness-raising support, we empower individuals and partner with media companies to operationalize well-being and mental health into work routines, policies & guidelines.
We work in English and Spanish. Through partnerships, we have also reached audiences in Portuguese and Arabic.
Our approach
- We offer evidence-based techniques and tools coming from neuroscience, psychology and mindfulness, combined with our first-hand experience working in newsrooms.
- We take a three-pronged holistic approach to change and focus on prevention rather than rehabilitation by: 1) Enhancing mental health awareness 2) Equipping leaders with knowledge and tools for policy reform and 3) Providing individual accompaniment.
- Our goal is to empower communication and media professionals and support companies and institutions to adopt a healthy work culture so they can actualize their impact on society to the fullest extent.
- We fundraise and create partnerships so that diverse communities and regions can get free or affordable access to mental health support and training.
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Who we are
The Self-Investigation was created in mid-2020 as a direct response to the rise in mental health challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Media workers, as front-line respondents and key actors for the good functioning of democracies, lacked support and training. In fact, mental health was, and still is in many parts of the world, a taboo in most workplaces.
Registered as a nonprofit foundation (Stichting) in The Netherlands since November 2021, we work globally to prove that a healthier way of working in the media is possible, urgent and makes smart business sense.
You can view our official statutes in Dutch here and an English translation here. Our tax ID is NL863183815B01.
Meet the team
Our global team is led by multi-lingual, certified coaches and trainers with decades of media experience. They all offer expertise and unique skill sets, along with a strong commitment to creating change and helping others.
We also draw on an international network of certified experts with lived experience on a variety of topics to provide tailor-made and state of the art training, coaching and support to both media and communications workers and their organisations.
Board of directors
Mar is one of the co-founders of The Self-Investigation. She is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, digital wellness educator and Acumen fellow working on raising awareness on how technology is changing the way we interact with ourselves, each other and as a society. She writes a column in Spanish newspaper El Confidencial on this topic. She’s committed to creating a healthier working culture in journalism to prevent others from burning out like she did after leading the technology and data work for the Panama Papers investigation.
Kim is one of the co-founders of The Self-Investigation. She provides personal leadership and burnout coaching as well as mindfulness-based stress reduction and resilience trainings to a broad public, including journalists and change makers. Prior to starting her personal development work, she served as a global freedom of expression activist and later as a founder and then organizational advisor to many media, journalism and social justice support programs around the world. She believes creating a more balanced, compassionate and sustainable world starts with nurturing those qualities in ourselves.
Aldara is one of the co-founders of The Self-Investigation. She is a journalist and coach, expert in emotional intelligence and mindfulness. She directs the coaching section in the NIUS digital newspaper. She founded The Coaching Post to raise self-awareness in the field of communication and education. Before that, she worked for 20 years as an editor on Noticias Cuatro and CNN+.
Staff
Paula is a journalist and program manager with experience in designing and delivering training projects and building partnerships with media organisations worldwide for the European Journalism Center and the Google News Initiative. Since 2022, she leads all operations at The Self-Investigation. She manages workflows and schedules, makes sure that projects run smoothly and always seeks for ways to maximise The Self-Investigation’s impact and collaborations.
AX Mina is part-time Program Director at The Self-Investigation. She is also a strategic consultant and leadership coach who’s supported news leaders and managers through programs with LION Publishers, The OpEd Project and the American Press Institute. She was a founding board member of the News Product Alliance and is a Senior Civic Media Fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Journalism and Communications. She is a certified trauma-informed yoga teacher and lifelong mindfulness practitioner.
Our network of trainers
Jeremy is the founding director of Chrysalis – a change and transformation advisory business specialising in leadership team building, coaching and helping organisations to manage change in the workplace. Jeremy is a qualified coach, project manager and trained in change management.
Emma Thomasson is a British journalist, consultant and trainer based in Germany. She previously worked for Reuters as a correspondent and bureau chief in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, South Africa and the UK. She has reported on a wide range of topics including business, technology, economics, politics and international law. She is also a leadership coach and an advocate for better workplace mental health. At Reuters, she helped run a peer network, which supports journalists suffering from stress and trauma, and ran workshops on burnout and resilience. She also set up a global mentoring network to promote diversity and support mid-level managers.
Dean has been a journalist for 30 years and is the author of a highly acclaimed memoir called Line in the Sand that will be published on June 27, 2023. Dean has found renewed meaning in life by sharing his story of recovery from trauma and reconnecting with his family. Dean led Reuters teams that covered the 2002 Bali bombings and the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. Dean was bureau chief for Reuters in Iraq from 2007-2008. It was during this time that a U.S. Apache gunship killed two Reuters journalists in Baghdad.
Dean created and rolled out a mental health strategy for Reuters from 2017-2020. It was a unique role in global media. The successes and failures of that initiative guide Dean in the workplace mental health training he does today.
Natalia Martín Cantero is a journalist and university lecturer based in Brussels (Belgium). She has written extensively about mental health and wellness in Spanish-speaking media worldwide, including El País, Univision Noticias, and Agencia EFE, where she worked as a United States correspondent for seven years. Her book, ‘Think Well and You Will Get It Right: Compassion, Mindfulness, and Other Refuges for Maintaining Hope in Today’s World,’ was published in January 2024 by Plataforma Editorial. She is a Stanford Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) instructor and a certified mindfulness and yoga instructor.
Martina is a journalist specialized in innovation and productivity. She has been in the communications industry for 23 years. She took a postgraduate course in Digital Journalism from Pompeu Fabra University and Google, and a she has a diploma in Emotional Intelligence and leadership. She has been a columnist for the newspapers La Nación in Argentina for 15 years and is co-host of Radio Metro. Martina is a visiting professor at the University of San Andres. Is co-author of the books “La Fábrica de Tiempo”, “Cómo domar tus pantallas” and the podcast “Cómo fabricar tiempo” with over 2 million listens. Winner of the Accenture award for Innovation journalism, and TOP 15 HR Influencer in Argentina 2021 and 2022. She works with leadership teams from global companies to catalyze their innovation, productivity and wellbeing.
Elena has 20+ years’ experience in strategy and organizational management with private & public companies as well as international NGOs working on social development, environmental sustainability and human rights. She has led multidisciplinary and multicultural teams, supporting them in both their personal development and effectiveness as teams, in a wide variety of organizations and programs. With the ever-changing nature of international development work, she brings innovation, and she is a dynamic challenge solver. She is a PCC certified coach by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), and a 6 Team Conditions and Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) practitioner.
Rocío is a journalist and an ICF certified coach, with training in Integrative Body Process and financial intelligence. She is an Acumen Fellow, a global network of change leaders, and she also has extensive experience in communication for change and the third sector.
Her mission is to accompany people to transform their world, helping them increase their self-knowledge, recognize their needs and improve their emotional management so that they achieve their goals.
Cat is an emotions coach and educator and has supported high-impact individuals through their internal healing and transformation. She has guided and trained mental health activists, social entrepreneurs, and coaches in emotional well-being for employees of the UN, UNICEF, World Economic Forum. She has also designed and facilitated emotions trainings for Change.org and Amazon.
Ana is a psychoanalyst and emergency psychology specialist. She is the founder of Vinland Solutions, a Company dedicated since 2005, to give psychological support to journalists, photojournalists, human rights defenders and women in politics who because of their jobs or their gender have been a target of persecution or violence.
She supports individuals suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, acute stress, depression or who are in need of support while they are being relocated for their safety.
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