About Me

In Amsterdam I live and breathe my interests in Sports, Art and Design

A Personal Motivation

Blending Design, Wellbeing & Productivity: My Mission

My mission is to promote integrating physical and mental wellbeing practices into corporate workshops. Through my design services, I therefore also strive to make a positive impact on a company’s work-life balance while guidig teams through the diverse challenges of innovation.

My time at the football academy and as a fitness trainer led me to recognize a large discrepency between the tools athletes leverage to perform and the tools corporations leverage to help their employees stay sharp and happy. Similarly, my experience giving team building workshops has greatly enriched my perspective on what makes a great team. On the basis of those insights I have developed and implemented new toolsets in close coordination with my peers that can be used to increase engagement in any workshop.

Empowering people and ideas to thrive using innovative facilitation techniques is my passion.

Jim Ekanem

Embracing creativity and flow to foster positive change and growth.

Driving Change With Holistic Facilitation

I believes in the power of fostering connection, promoting mental wellbeing, and enhancing team dynamics through innovative facilitation approaches.

In 2020 I transitioned from being an athlete to becoming an artist in every sense of the metaphor. From designing my own clothing to spoken word performances in Amsterdam in front of 200 people. Based on the positive reception of my art, I believe that anyone posesses an inherent quality to express themselves creatively – A discovery from which I think high performers can benefit from the most. While many people in the workforce don’t think of themselves as creative, I believe that anyone is able to contribute to innovation through playful social interaction and carefully timed productivity exercises inspired by athletic training.

My Career Milestones

September 2015

Bachelor’s in Media & IT

Design, programming & film at University of Applied Sciences Cologne

September 2015

January 2019

Traineeship Service Design @Zurich Insurance

UX & Design Thinking at the swiss multinational in Germany

January 2019

January 2020

Soccer Player @ Spain Soccer Academy

Professional grade training from elite coaches in Sevilla, Spain

January 2020

August 2020

Master’s in Human Computer Interaction @UU

Research Master’s & Honours in Social Design at Utrecht University

August 2020

September 2020

Fitness Community Founder & Trainer

Started as a free covid initiative; ended on Meetup w/ 150 members

September 2020

February 2022

UX Design Graduation Project @DeployTeq

Usability Testing, UX Research, Design Principles

February 2022

December 2022

Freelance UX / UI Designer

App Design, Webdesign, Branding & Leadership at LeepRoot

December 2022

June 2023

UX Magazine Publication about Accessible UX

Why We Need 11 Usability Heuristics