Every organisation has more potential than the system lets out.
We work with you to release it.
BvLB Advisory is an independent practice working on the operating model behind the strategy, for the people who carry the accountability for it.
- Based
- Zürich, Switzerland. Mandates wherever the work is, in English and German.
- Founder
- Beate van Loo-Born, CFO and COO, twenty years in the seat before founding the practice.
- Mandate
- Advisory. We diagnose, design and accompany. Decisions and delivery stay with you.
- Clients
- Funders and foundations, investors and the founders they back, executive teams.
Mission
Every organisation performs exactly as its system permits.
Our mission is to find what limits that system, whether human, procedural or technical, and to remove it, so that the organisation is free to create the positive impact it was created for.
Human
People and judgment
Decision rights, capability, authority and the space to use it. Where knowledge sits, and whether it reaches the decision that needs it.
Procedural
Process and governance
Approval chains, planning cycles, reporting and structure. What was designed once for a slower world and never rebuilt.
Technical
Systems and data
The tooling and information the organisation runs on, and how much of the working day is spent compensating for it.
Who we work with
Three worlds. One way of working.
The starting problem differs. The method does not. Each mandate begins with an independent diagnosis and ends on a date agreed at the outset.
Funding that turns into impact.
Foundations, funders and impact creators whose mission is clear and whose portfolio has become complex.
Read more → 02 / Venture Capital · InvestorsInvestments that reach the next stage.
Funds and the companies they back, at the point where the business has outgrown its structure.
Read more → 03 / Corporates · ExecutivesThe operating model your strategy assumes.
Executive teams whose strategy is agreed and whose machinery was built for a slower world.
Read more →Why it works
We are mandated by an independent party. On purpose.
In most advisory work the organisation being examined is also the one paying for it, and everybody involved is aware of that. It changes what ends up written down. Uncomfortable findings get softened, or held back until they are easier to deliver, and the report ends up serving the relationship rather than the problem.
We work the other way round. The mandate comes from the party with distance from the problem: the board rather than the executive, the fund rather than the portfolio company, the funder rather than the organisation receiving the grant. That single structural choice is what makes the diagnosis usable.
It also changes the atmosphere inside the organisation. We sit with the operating team rather than above it, and we are not competing with anybody there. We take no line management, no budget, no permanent seat, and we are not auditioning for a job that already belongs to someone. That is usually the point at which people start telling us what is actually happening, which is the only way any of this works.
No delivery contract to protect
We hold no implementation revenue that a soft diagnosis would preserve. Implementation is scoped separately, after a diagnosis, and never bundled into it.
No success fee, no equity
Nothing about the finding changes what we earn, so nothing about what we earn shapes the finding.
No threat to the team
We work alongside the people who run the place, with an end date agreed at the start. Nobody is being replaced, assessed or reported on, so nobody has to manage us.
The same words to both sides
What we say to the party who pays is what we say to the organisation being advised, including when it is uncomfortable for the payer.
Independence is not a claim about character. It is a claim about structure, and structure is checkable.
Founder
Advice from someone who has carried the accountability.
I am Beate van Loo-Born, a CFO and COO by trade. I founded the Advisory after twenty years of sitting on the other side of the table, where I kept meeting the same gap: the strategy was sound and the machinery underneath it had never been rebuilt.
Immediately before founding the practice I was Group CFO of Physik Instrumente, a precision motion technology manufacturer of roughly €360 million revenue and 1,900 people, with a remit spanning HR, Legal, Risk and Compliance, IT, Supply Chain and Sustainability alongside finance. I led the company through a full ownership transition, from transaction readiness to day one. Before that came fifteen years at UBS across Zürich, Melbourne and Singapore, concluding as Global Head of Strategic Programs, then COO for Financial Information at SIX Group. At Climate Arc, a Rockefeller Philanthropy spin-off, I was COO and Board Trustee and built the core functions and governance from nothing, which is why the funder work is not an afterthought.
I hold master's degrees from Cambridge and the Sorbonne and am undertaking doctoral research at the University of Antwerp on the drivers of performance in dysfunctional ecosystems. I co-author The Liquid Organisation with Kwafo Ofori-Boateng, contribute to Forbes Councils, lead the European chapter of Women Data Professionals Global and serve on the board of the Swiss Finance Institute Alumni Association. I race Ironman, with seven World Championship qualifications, which is where I first tested what I believe about performance under load.
In brief
Boards and affiliations
- Swiss Finance Institute Alumni Association, board
- Women Data Professionals Global, European chapter lead
- Academy of Management, member
- Forbes Councils, contributor
Education
- University of Cambridge, MA
- Sorbonne University, MA
- University of Antwerp, doctoral research in progress
Also available for
- Board and non-executive roles
- Interim and fractional CxO leadership
- Keynote speaking and moderation
- Teaching with business school partners
Tell me what is not moving.
The first conversation is usually enough to say whether this is the right practice for it.
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