Ann Backes
Certified professional coach and therapist trained in NLP, specialized in workplace wellbeing in Liège
My passion for this work
I've always been drawn to personal development and fascinated by the complexity of being human. That curiosity about how we work deepened when, after losing my father, I revisited it more personally. I started a journey of therapy and training, one that shaped how I understand people today.
Today I am a certified coach in both the professional and personal fields, and I keep enriching my practice through ongoing training. My approach takes in the whole person: the mind (thoughts, beliefs), internal states (emotions and bodily sensations), and behaviors.
Concretely, I draw on tools from that training: NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), where I hold the certified master practitioner title, Ericksonian hypnosis, EFT and mindfulness (MBSR). Complementary approaches that I adapt to each person and each goal.
Every engagement is, for me, a moment of exchange, growth, and personal evolution alongside people who are working toward goals that matter to them. I've seen first-hand the impact coaching can have, not only on the people I work with, but on those around them.
My professional path
Before coaching, I spent several years in the corporate and management world: management control in industry, Big 4 public accounting, financial advisory, then project lead and facilitator of group workshops for entrepreneurs at a non-profit. Today, I also teach at a university college.
This multi-sector path is my strength as a coach: I understand from the inside the realities of the executives, managers, and professionals I work with, their responsibilities, their workload, their needs. I have lived them, and that is what makes my support concrete.
I love travel too. I lived several months in Greece and seven months across Europe, experiences that shaped how I understand others and myself.
For individuals
For businesses
How I combine the coach and therapist roles
The two words cover different professions, which are nonetheless highly complementary.
Therapy looks first at the why: where the suffering comes from, what history installed it, what needs repairing. Coaching looks at the how: where you are today, where you want to go, and the concrete steps that take you there.
My working frame is coaching. You arrive with a work situation that is stuck and a goal, however vague. We start from there. What my therapeutic training adds is a toolbox for the moments when the goal is clear but something refuses to move: a fear that comes back at every meeting, a sentence that is impossible to say to your manager, a physical tension that rises before you have even opened your inbox.
In those moments, more reasoning does not help. We work differently, with the body, with images and with emotions. That is where NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) comes in, in service of the goal you came with.
If your question is about your work, your balance, your limits or the direction you want to take, you are in the right place. If it is about lasting psychological suffering, a diagnosed disorder or a past that calls for deep work, a psychologist or a psychotherapist is the right person to see, and I will tell you so.
Career and training
Career path
Independent professional coach
Since 2024
+ Senior lecturer at Haute École de la Province de Liège (HEPL)
Since September 2025
Project lead, municipal non-profit
Workshop facilitation, working groups, economic and social development (2023–2024)
Chartered Accountant, Big 4
2022–2023
Financial advisor, chartered accountant firm
2020–2022
Project officer, municipal non-profit
Post-launch entrepreneur coaching, co-working training, business plans (2019)
Cost controller, industrial company
2017–2018
Training and certifications
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) cycle
2025
NLP and Ericksonian hypnosis, CPSE Liège
NLP Practitioner and NLP Master Practitioner obtained
2024–2026
EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), IFAPME Liège
2024
Sophrology as a stress-management tool, IFAPME Liège
2024
Professional and personal coaching, IFAPME Liège
2023–2024
Certified Chartered Accountant ITAA, Brussels
2021–2023
Chartered Accountant Certification (ITAA), CBCEC Liège
2019–2020
Bachelor and Master's in Business Engineering, HEC ULg Liège
2011–2016