DR NADINE SINCLAIR

Dr Nadine Sinclair is a strategy consultant, executive coach and co-founder of Mind Matters. She advises corporations internationally on strategy, R&D and large-scale change, from transformations to post-merger integrations, coaches senior executives and entrepreneurs, and has trained over 1,500 researchers from more than 30 institutions, including Max Planck institutes, CERN and Helmholtz Munich, in project management, productivity and resilience. She is the co-creator of the Personal Resilience Indicator and the author of the international bestseller On Track: How to Lead Research Projects with Clarity and Confidence.

Nadine grew up in a small village in Bavaria, in a family of entrepreneurs. She spent her childhood among start-ups and saw first-hand what it takes to stay focused on what matters most through the ups and downs of running a business.

Science came first. She earned a BSc in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Abertay-Dundee in Scotland, an MSc in Molecular Biology from the University of Göttingen, and completed her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. She knows what it is to design an experiment that fails for the fourth time, to defend a result in front of a sceptical audience, and to keep a long project moving when no one is checking in on you.

Then came the boardroom. Nadine brings 30,000+ hours of hands-on project management experience, built across 18 years as a strategy consultant, at McKinsey and as an independent consultant. Much of that experience comes from planning and managing the execution of large-scale change: transformations, post-merger integrations, and the reorganisations that follow both, where the plan on paper is only ever half the work. She has led project teams in more than 20 countries, in both the public and private sector, and she continues to advise corporate clients today alongside her work with the research community.

Nadine works internationally as a management consultant, executive coach and keynote speaker. She takes on consulting engagements independently or alongside top consulting firms, including McKinsey, where she serves as an External Advisor, and her clients include venture capital and private equity firms. She advises management teams on strategy and R&D, and plans and manages large-scale change: transformations, post-merger integrations, reorganisations. Her working principle: plan the change and plan the transition, because the new structure can be drawn on paper, and the passage people must make into it cannot. As a coach, she helps executives and entrepreneurs lead with clarity and conviction, drawing on the latest insights from neuroscience, cognitive science and behavioural economics. Her engagements are designed around how our brains actually acquire, store and apply new habits, so the changes her clients make hold under pressure rather than evaporating after the workshop.

Her research background is why the next generation of researchers and academic leaders is close to her heart. Through Mind Matters' flagship trainings, Fast Forward: Time and Project Management Training for Researchers and Resilience Training for Researchers, Nadine has trained doctoral researchers and postdocs from institutions across Europe and beyond. She writes regularly on productivity, project management and resilience for researchers in the Mind Matters articles, and her book On Track distils the project management system taught in Fast Forward.

Her experience on both sides, in the lab and in the boardroom, has taught her that wellbeing and top performance are not at odds, and that both are attainable for everyone.

Bringing training to your researchers? Explore training for researchers or book a call. For corporate advisory, coaching and speaking enquiries, get in touch.

The articles are where we work in public: productivity, project management, resilience, and the research behind all three.