Caecilie Hechtel

My name is Caecilie Olive Hechtel, Ceci for friends. I was born in Milan to an Italian mother and a German father. Growing up between Milan and Arese, I left home immediately after high school and lived abroad for many years where I laid the foundations for a solid international career and where I met my husband Fabio. Since 2021 we have moved to Polverigi with our two dogs Sheila and Geena.
Between about 14 and 38, my focus was mainly on career and success with some leisure breaks until one day, an email woke my conscience. Boarding yet another flight (at that time I flew up to 6 times a week), I received a message that made me very angry. It was precisely the disproportionate anger that gave me the alarm and made me understand that the problem was not the email received, but the too much time passed since the last time I asked myself if I was really okay. As a result, I spent the scarce 60 minutes of the flight compiling a statistic on the distribution of the hours of my typical day in the following categories: mind, heart, soul, and body. I was shocked to discover that body and soul together did not even reach 3%. At that exact moment, I decided to change my life. 18 months of savings later I agreed to resign. Four years of family business followed, giving room to my intuition and compromising on income. It was during these years that I like to define as “years of free-styling”, that I have re-approached the kitchen through the digital marketing backdoor. My interest in healthy food has its roots in childhood, a period in which our parents followed a rigid and dogmatic macrobiotic regime. It took more than 30 years to get back to natural cooking. Between 2016 and 2018 I cooked live on Facebook with growing enthusiasm and mastery, sharing my knowledge of macrobiotic cuisine but above all learning to cook thanks to the advice of friends - much more capable and experienced than me - who faithfully followed the live shows. At the height of my culinary live shows, one day in November 2017, an old colleague and friend called me to invite me to return to the multinational. Not only could I return to corporate, but I could also complete the training as an ICF professional coach, share my existential discoveries, and be the person I have become both at home and at work opening a new era of work-love balance.