About
Professional · Holistic · Pioneering.
HR Anima is an HR consultancy, coaching practice and training provider based in the Netherlands — with a reach and experience that extends far beyond it.
We were founded on the belief that the separation between "professional" and "human" is unhealthy, unnecessary — and costly.
Organisations that ignore the real person and soul of their people pay the price in disengagement, conflict, turnover and lost potential. People who disconnect from their own purpose pay the price in exhaustion, confusion and a quiet sense of something missing.
HR Anima bridges that gap.
Our Name
HR — the professional discipline at the heart of what we do. Anima — Latin and Jungian for the soul, the inner life, the animating force.
Together: the soul of HR work. The belief that people are not resources to be managed, but human beings to be seen, developed and supported in becoming fully themselves within the organisations they serve.
Our why
To help people and organisations come home to themselves — so that work becomes a place of purpose, belonging and genuine human growth.
Every person carries within them a road not yet walked, a bridge not yet crossed, a destination the heart has always known. HR Anima walks alongside you — until you arrive.
Founder
I am Clara Vrielink. Thank you for being here.
I have worked at the intersection of HR, coaching and human development for many years. I'm an experienced HR consultant, coach, trainer and facilitator with a background that spans corporate HR, holistic coaching, equine-assisted (family constellation )work and trauma-informed programs for veterans and first responders.
I am the co-founder of Stichting Odysseus' Pad, which offers The Hero's Journey programs for warriors and their families dealing with PTSD and moral injury.
My work is underpinned by a simple but powerful belief: Every person deserves to be truly seen.
Who I am
I strongly believe that life fits widely, boldly and courageously outside of boxes — and that is also for how I live my life.
I am a woman who is equally at home in a boardroom and in a field with horses. Who finds as much wisdom in a long walk through nature as in a beautifully argued theory. Who has laughed loudly in too many countries to count, and cried in a few of them too. Travel has taught me that human beings — underneath all the noise of culture, language, religion and role — want the same things: to be seen, to belong, to matter.
I love animals with a fierceness that surprises people who meet me in a professional context. I find trees quietly extraordinary. I love nature, animals and the kind of conversations that change you. I have a sense of humour I refuse to apologise for. I believe kindness is strength, sincerity is rare and authenticity is the only thing worth building on. And I take kindness seriously — not as a soft option, but as the most courageous and powerful force I know.
The most transformative conversations happen when someone finally feels safe enough to be exactly who they are.
My work — and my world — is open to everyone. Every background, every belief, every identity. People of every walk of life, every faith, every culture.
The rainbow community is not just welcome with me — they are celebrated. Because a world where everyone belongs is not a distant ideal.
It is the only world worth working towards.
That is not a policy. It is who I am.
Somewhere between a boardroom in the Netherlands and a field in South Dakota surrounded by wild horses, between a veteran finding his way home and a leader finally understanding what has held her back for years, between the quiet wisdom of a horse and the complexity of an organisation that has lost its way, is in full restructuring or growing modus— I found my purpose. Or perhaps it found me.
I believe that work, at its best, is one of the most powerful places for human beings to grow, to belong, and to become more fully themselves. And I believe that organisations, at their best, are communities of people who are genuinely seen, genuinely valued, and genuinely connected to something that matters.
That is where purpose meets profession. Not as a slogan — but as a lived conviction that has shaped every conversation, every coaching session, every assignment I have ever taken on. The professional and the human are not separate. They never were. And when you bring them together — with rigour, with warmth, with the courage to go deep — something extraordinary becomes possible.
That is HR Anima.
Team work we do · as a team
Some working partnerships are professional arrangements.
Ours is something else entirely.
Lynn Dressel and I have been walking alongside each other — in life and in work — for many years. What began as a shared passion for deep human transformation and true connection has grown into one of the most meaningful collaborations I know: two people who trust each other completely, whose strengths are genuinely different, and whose combined presence creates something neither of us could create alone.
Lynn is, in the truest sense of the word, a holder of space. When Lynn is in the room — or in the field, or beside the fire at the end of a retreat day — people feel it. There is a quality of stillness and complete attention that is extraordinarily rare, and that allows others to go to places they simply would not go without it. Lynn listens at a depth most people never experience. Knows precisely when to ask the question that opens everything. Knows when to say nothing at all. And when the moment calls for it — challenges with a directness that is never harsh, always true.
Lynn brings to our work a background that is as layered as it is powerful: US Army Veteran, deployed to Iraq, with more than ten years of military service. Tai Chi and Yoga instructor. Art and creative process facilitator. Peer group counsellor with deep experience in trauma, PTSD and moral injury. Lynn understands — from the inside — what it means to carry something heavy, to search for a way through, and to find it.
Together we work with teams, groups and individuals on assignments where the depth of the work demands more than one pair of hands and one pair of eyes. Where the complexity of human dynamics, trauma or transformation requires the kind of steady, multi-layered presence that only comes from two people who have done their own deep work — and who have learned, over years, how to work as one.
We do not just work together. We live it. As life partners, our collaboration is woven into everything — the early morning conversations, the long debriefs after a difficult day, the shared conviction that this work matters and that people deserve the very best of what we have to give.
What we offer together is not a service. It is a calling — shared.