Nanda Frances Bergstein · at the thresholds of systems change

What threshold are you at?

Every real change moves through a threshold — in a startup, a company, an industry, or in the Self — where the old way no longer works and the new one is not yet built. It can feel like crisis, conflict, or a stuckness that will not shift. Yet it holds the most transformational pressure there is: crossed consciously, it is how a person — or an organisation — becomes more integrated, and able to have far greater impact in the world.

Seven of those moments are below; open the one that is yours.

I You are guiding a room of conflicting parties toward a binding agreement — but progress keeps stalling and dissolving into position papers, workshops and frameworks.

I have co-built such agreements — the Bangladesh Accord, ACT on Living Wages. I know first-hand the long, tedious stretch between a potentially willing coalition and a robust instrument that actually executes and creates impact. Content is the smallest challenge. It is the power imbalances, the trust that is not there yet, the desire for quick fixes instead of carving out the right measures, the financing mechanisms, and — not to underestimate — the negotiation behind the negotiation, back inside each organisation. I help you hold the room and build the capacity to carry it: interests and conflicts mapped, a container for the building work set up, support for the negotiators in their own back-channels, the coalition kept on track, and you steady enough to lead in the midst of it. In this kind of industry transformation you rarely hold delegated power; your convening power comes from how you bring the parties together. And while it sounds daunting, the result — binding action — changes the trajectory of people and the planet.

If you are convening change in high-stakes, multi-stakeholder contexts — let's have a deeper conversation.

II You are driving change inside a legacy institution built to resist it.

I drove change for sustainability and human rights inside a German corporation for fifteen years. It takes empathy, strategic thinking, alliances, politics and patience, with wins that move a millimetre a year. Going against the DNA of an institution is hard and creates conflict — but that is, in the end, only blocked creative energy; once it dissolves through the right moves, an organisation like that can become an extraordinary force for change, as this one did. I know the playbook from the inside, and I am glad to pass that experience on.

If the status quo is winning this quarter — write to me.

III You are a founder building something genuinely promising for people and the planet — but cash runs out in two months, as it so often does, and the term sheet rewrites what you built.

A capital raise decides more than the money — it also decides who holds the vision afterwards. I have sat in these rooms with the cash running low, and I know how quickly the giving-away starts under pressure, when there seems to be no choice. So we make sure you are fully prepared: the mindset, the model, the numbers, the capital strategy — and the walk-away, settled before the room. We challenge the sense of "no choice" and look for ways to widen your independence. And most importantly, we keep you grounded, so you stay present, centred and sharp in the room.

If this is your month — write to me.

IV The company has outgrown the way you first built it. Some days it feels as if it has outgrown you — and you know it is time to build the next phase.

I lived this with the WE Programme — my first venture with real impact, and the potential to change how human rights are protected in global production. The day came when the right thing was to hand it off so it could grow further. That kind of transition needs conscious design: letting go of what no longer serves, and keeping the foundational things that must be preserved — including the founder's mentality, because losing that can mean the death of a venture. I found an extraordinary team to grow WE into something I could never have built alone. The answer is not always to leave; sometimes it is to change your role. But whatever it is, this passage matters as much as starting up, and it compounds your legacy.

If you are in the middle of this — write to me.

V The board meeting where you justify yourself for the tenth time.

I have sat on that side of the table, answering the same questions over and over, wondering why "they didn't get it." Until I realised it was not about a perfect presentation — it was about trust, coalition-building, taking the board along the change path itself. It feels unnecessary, because every minute away from the doing feels like sunk cost. So we change the strategy: prepare the case the way a board actually hears it, train your ability to listen and take in the feedback, and build coalition outside the room in a way that feeds the venture instead of draining it — and afterwards we learn from the result and re-strategise.

If you want to change the cycle — write to me.

VI The people at home are getting breadcrumbs from you.

If you are a builder at heart, it is in your DNA. You cannot stop thinking about your venture; you are forever turning over how to make it better. And under capital pressure — the daily reality of a venture builder — your nervous system is most likely in continuous survival mode: fight, flight or freeze. That spills into your personal life. The people you love get the breadcrumbs and the stress reactions; and if you are honest with yourself, you feel the guilt of it.

I experienced this most intensely in the startup years with CAMM. Without the safety net of a corporation, I had to learn to regulate, and to live, while my system was in survival. I will not promise work-life balance. But practices that keep you steady, and weeks with room for the people who matter — that can be built. And underneath it is one assumption: when your life flows more, you show up better in the business.

If this is the door you opened first — write to me.

VII It worked — and something in you is grieving anyway.

After the exit, the handover, the spin-out — your "baby" seems to be thriving, and you should be overjoyed. But then comes the time in between. Nobody prepared me for the grief of watching something I built walk on without me — and perhaps be changed. It took me time even to call it grief, and to see it was there because this mattered, because I cared. Understood as a passage and moved through consciously, it can become a rejuvenating, productive phase that sets you up for what is next. I can help you build a structure around that time.

If this is where you are — write to me.

None of these exactly, and still something here speaks to you? Write anyway — the first conversation is exploratory.

I have sat in these fires myself — twenty years building ventures inside and outside of business: negotiating the agreements that bind whole industries, like the Bangladesh Accord, and co-building ventures like CAMM Solutions, a materials breakthrough against microplastics. Many times I wished I had a guide and partner beside me through these transitions. That is what I offer now.

Everyone at your table holds a stake: investors, board, team, even the people at home. A sparring partner holds only one — you, and what you need to face to grow.

I work along three avenues.

One to one — the advisory. A sparring partner to a founder, builder or changemaker through the hardest passage of their work.

Across a sector — negotiation, facilitation & venture platform building. Helping a convening party carry a coalition of opposing interests into a binding accord — the model behind the Bangladesh Accord, with the people in the room properly held.

For corporates & startups — as Advisory Board Member. Working closely with the executive team to scale and drive impact.

One criterion from my side: what you build has to have a positive impact for people and the planet. And one expectation: I work from lived experience, not theory — the processes and tools are field-tested, and transformative by nature. They ask a real willingness to work at the edge and stretch, in the outer world and the inner one. More about me, or the five builds.

A quiet portrait of Nanda Frances Bergstein in natural light.

If something here lands.

If you want someone who will tell you the truth and carry the accountability with you, write to me. The first conversation is exploratory — what you are carrying, and whether I am the one to carry it with you. If it fits, I design a trajectory for us to work together.

— Nanda

The letters.

From time to time I write a letter — on building, on thresholds, on the inner work the outer work demands. If you would like it, leave your address.

About

A taste of where I have been.

I am not a believer in long CVs — in the end, instinct and trust decide whether working together makes sense. But here is at least a taste of it.

Portrait of Nanda Frances Bergstein, leaning against a wall in natural light.

How I got here

None of it was planned. In essence, I followed my inner voice, over and over, often onto the untrodden path — the one that makes sense today, but certainly did not at the time.

I was going to study music, and then got drawn instead to international relations, human rights, development and globalisation. I never expected business to become my home — but it turned out to be the strongest lever for change I could find. Ever since, one question has run underneath everything: how do you actually accelerate change for the benefit of people and the planet?

What the work taught me

I have pursued that question from every side — inside a corporation for fifteen years, in the binding agreements that hold whole industries together, and in the raw trenches of a startup. Two lessons stayed with me.

In the corporate and industry world: even when everything points away from ethical business, there is always an opening to create a path forward. Stuckness is mostly a system’s inability to find the next step amid conflicting interests — and that is exactly where the right people, the right method and the right conversation make the difference.

The second is the sheer courage of startup entrepreneurship. Founders walk a path of relentless resistance and insecurity; they are, in their way, warriors, and it is their willingness to go against the grain of the status quo that builds the break-through solutions people and the planet need. It is rarely recognised, and badly under-supported.

I understand now why ninety-seven per cent of startups fail: a nervous system that can function under sustained survival is one of the core skills to build — alongside generating cash from day one.

Nanda outdoors, with the Churfirsten ridge in the distance.

What I believe

My leading question — what actually accelerates systems change — has kept me working at the edges of what is possible, with an eye on the tipping points. I am driven by a simple belief: the state of the world, and the economic, social and environmental systems underneath it, are man-made. And if they are man-made, then it is people who can move us onto another path.

What I offer now

What I am most proud of is that the ventures I helped create still work, and still grow. I am impatient, because there need to be more of them, at far greater breadth. I want founders and the leaders of break-through initiatives to be better supported, so their gifts can ripple. That is the work I am offering now.

The longer story is in the five builds, or write to me.

Threshold

A nine-month partnership.

The core of my work is a partnership called Threshold. It's designed as a container for the major transitions in ventures that also require inner growth. It's a 9-month challenge — symbolically linked to the time it takes to give birth to something new (and let go of the old).

For whom, and when

Threshold is for the builder carrying the hardest passage of a large-scale venture or a transition — the founder, the next-generation owner family, the CEO, the managing director going for real scale — at the point where the proven playbook has run out and the next one is not yet written.

What you leave with

Over the nine months, you continuously develop and upgrade a personal operating system to manoeuvre the complexities of your work — built and integrated in real time. It rests on four pieces.

The Map. Of the venture, the stakeholders, and how the work meets your own life — in essence, your strategic landscape. This is also where we work on navigating the people around the venture: the board, the investors, the shareholders and interest groups whose expectations pull against each other. Be prepared: this is a building exercise, often using methods you may not have worked with before. You are allowed to have fun!

The Anchor. The capacity to stay coherent under prolonged ambiguity, conflict and pressure without losing contact with what the work is for, and what is important to you personally.

The Practice. The daily, embodied practices that hold the architecture together — specific tools, integrated into everyday life, creating flow and grounding.

The Compass. For the transitions that arrive again and again, in every area of a life — the recurring passages, read and named before they overwhelm. Grow practised at transitions and they do not become less demanding — but they do become far easier to move through.

People leave this work steadier than they came — with a vision that is truly theirs, a compass for the passages ahead, practices that keep them steady under load, and a life that feels more their own again. And on the outside: trust with shareholders and stakeholders, clarity for the organisation, and the capacity to hold the next level of growth.

The philosophy and experience behind

Behind the work is a map I built over twenty years of accompanying these passages — and of walking through several myself.

My work draws on different traditions on how to navigate change and transformation. For the inner arc — the hero’s and heroine’s journey and Jung’s process of individuation. For collaborating, managing stakeholders and negotiating impact — older and indigenous wisdom practices on how to hold council across many parties. I also apply methodologies from Theory U, and Adam Kahane’s scenario work in Collaborating with the Enemy, based on his groundbreaking peace work in Colombia. Very practically — and yes, this may sound hilarious — we work with bricks and build constellations to understand what is actually going on.

For venture-building in complex ecosystems I work with emerging practices and prototypes, applying the startup discipline of continuous simplicity and stripping away.

And all of it ties into the hard core of business: I keep working on business models, financials and operating structure, and bring that into the partnership. I do not believe in consultancy-style strategy and decks, because they rarely survive contact with reality. My mission is to support changing reality.

How it runs

The first weeks are diagnostic — a careful read of where you sit on the map, what is yours to carry, and what belongs to the system around you. From there, defined cycles of strategic work and integration, anchored every time on both sides: outer strategy and inner ground.

We work in four modes.

Online, across the whole partnership. Strategic calls, and the space to think with someone who already knows the terrain.

In person, where the work calls for it. A city before a board meeting, an offsite that matters to the decision.

At Brodersby, on the Schlei. Reserved for the deeper work and transition — a retreat of two or three days, usually around the second half of the partnership. The Sanctuary.

Personal AI operating system. If relevant, we also set you up to have your own AI cockpit.

How it begins

If the work calls you, get in touch and we will have an exploratory conversation. If we match, you receive an offer, and the journey begins from there. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sanctuary

Brodersby, 1683.

The house was built in 1683 as a sanctuary for people in need of support — on even older abbey stones. Today, it still holds that intention.

The Sanctuary sits in the village of Brodersby — the Schlei on one side, the Baltic on the other. People have come here for three and a half centuries to be held, restored and rejuvenated, before going back into the world.

I strongly believe in the power of environment and place. That is why I invite people doing high-stakes change work into the space. Within a Threshold partnership, Brodersby is reserved for the deepest part of the work: usually a stay or two, often in the second half of the engagement. Long walks, long tables, time to think without the phone, hands in the garden, time in the water and the open air. Pure spaciousness.

On special occasions I also open the Sanctuary to similar kinds of work. If you are looking for a space to work one to one, write to me.

Portfolio

Five builds.

Five builds, in the order they happened — each one led into the next.

Tchibo, Hamburg · transforming a corporate from the inside out

Mainstreaming human rights and sustainability into the core business.

Over a decade inside one of Germany’s largest consumer-goods and coffee companies, mainstreaming human rights and environmental responsibility into strategy and governance, the coffee and non-food supply chains, the products, and the processes around them. Moving a corporation of many ecosystems takes time and can be slow — but there are methods and mechanisms to “irritate” the system so that change compounds faster, as it did here.

Tchibo, Global Supply Chains · an alternative to audit-and-comply

The WE Programme — breaking through stalling progress on dignified work.

My first venture at Tchibo: designing and scaling a different way to protect and improve human rights in global production, after the traditional audit-and-compliance model had failed to move the needle. The WE Programme applies conflict management, emerging practices and courageous conversations between all the stakeholders in a factory, combined with state-of-the-art, data-driven measurement of progress. With WE, compliance with the UN due-diligence principles is effectively ensured — while creating real, lasting change that is meaningful for workers and business alike. In 2023 it was spun out as an independent business, with Tchibo as anchor partner — today operating across eight producer countries and a growing number of clients. I have stepped back operationally and now chair the board.

Bangladesh · before and after Rana Plaza · the first sector solution

The Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety.

Co-architect, with PVH, IndustriALL and the Clean Clothes Campaign — work that began a year before Rana Plaza and became binding after it. Companies with every reason to mistrust each other, held inside one enforceable agreement. It rebuilt the safety floor of the apparel and garment industry, and has since expanded to Pakistan, with more countries on the radar. Building the International Accord taught me how to negotiate an agreement and design an institution that shifts paradigms and translates into long-term impact.

Global · striving for complex paradigm shifts

ACT on Living Wages.

Co-initiated with peers from the largest global garment and apparel brands. Having seen that the Accord could deliver binding agreement and real impact, we took those learnings and joined forces to raise wage levels in production countries — using collective bargaining, and tying it to brands’ purchasing practices so that wage rises would not trigger a cut-and-run on the buying side. We set ACT up as a foundation, so the work could be long-term and sustainable; it has since delivered the sector’s first brand-supported collective bargaining agreement, in Cambodia.

CAMM Solutions · 2022 onwards

The microplastics fight, from pre-product to post-revenue.

Managing Director and Chief Impact Officer, co-building and co-leading the venture beside its founder for four years. CAMM is a materials technology to replace plastics in packaging, now fully industrialised and in scaling mode. I moved through the startup trenches in full: the raises, the term sheets, the board meetings, the weeks it was all about to hit the fan, the long uncertainty — especially through industrialisation and the ramp-up. The most painful and rewarding years of my life — and the ones that finally made me understand the courage and sacrifice it takes to be an entrepreneur, a startup founder above all. It is hard to explain from the outside; but anyone who has done it knows exactly what I mean.

⁂

My training: an MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation from the LSE; International Relations at TU Dresden; High Performance Leadership and working in conflict at IMD Lausanne and St. Gallen — among others, with George Kohlrieser; a decade of transitions work directly with Thomas Atum O’Kane; embodiment with Amanda Biccum. Part of the IMAGINE leaders network founded by Paul Polman and Valerie Keller.

Write

Every message reaches me personally.

Tell me what you are carrying. The first conversation is exploratory, with nothing owed on either side.

Or simply: n(at)nandabergstein.com

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Nanda Frances Bergstein
Westerfelder Weg 15
24398 Brodersby
Deutschland

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Nanda Frances Bergstein, Anschrift wie oben.

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