MAGALI’S MAGIC

ALUMNI IN FOCUS

‘From impossible to impact’ is her motto. Initiating sustainable change her mission. Systemic thinking her approach. Who is this engineer-entrepreneur who knows how to get to the essence without losing sight of the whole picture? A portrait of ‘big picture thinker’ Magali Minet.

Social entrepreneur, systemic coach, improvisation actress, musician, ... Magali Minet is not to be taken for granted. She calls herself and her company ‘Mind Innovators’. Here, engineering expertise, psychological dynamics and service design are integrated to initiate and guide sustainable change processes. The essence of her conviction is in line with what Confucius once said: ‘Every journey begins with a first step’. That first step lies with yourself to then gradually expand into your environment, your organisation and society. “Change starts with the awareness of being part of the movement yourself. It is about identifying where you as an entity can play a strengthening role in the overall link, inherently part of a well-oiled whole. This applies both to an individual level but equally to organisations,” Magali says.

Magali Minet

©Julie Feyaerts

Globalist

Magali graduated from Group T Campus in 2013 as a Biochemistry Engineer, Medical Bio-Engineering option with a well-deserved ‘magna cum laude’. Throughout her school career, she struggled with the apparent dichotomy between ‘exact’ and ‘human’ sciences. “You were either good at maths or strong in languages. Constant choices had to be made. “I became blazing with Latin, philosophy and poetry, but equally with exact sciences or mathematics. That did not fit into the school pigeonhole system I was part of”.

After high school, a new dilemma awaited Magali: study psychology or engineering? A hard-fought compromise led to engineering technology and the direction Biochemistry. For her, the link between science and life, in the broad sense of the word. The postgraduate ‘Biomedical Engineering Techniques’ that Magali followed after her master’s was along the same lines: how to embody even more the translation between technology and humans?

From her student days, Magali vividly remembers the guest lecture by climate ambassador Serge de Gheldere. “He posited the proposition ‘Who is here to make the world a better place?’ Shuffling, muttering and laughter. My hand went smoothly into the air. As an engineer, you use scientific and mathematical knowledge to identify challenges in your own environment and turn them into opportunities and solutions. This within a larger playing field, such as society. This means first seeing and recognising the challenges and then making them workable for the doers. If engineers look away from the big world problems, we miss an essential link in finding solutions.”

Clinical engineer

Magali’s professional life starts at Materialise in Leuven, the pioneer in 3D printing and after 30 years still among the world’s top companies. The company’s mission ‘innovation for a better and healthier world’ is right up her street. She starts as a corporate quality engineer and after a year is active as a clinical engineer. Among other things, she designs anatomical heart models for the world’s cardiology elite and also plans virtual skull and face surgeries with surgeons. In 2019, she will co-launch Materialise’s new cardiovascular planner as a technical consultant. Everything points to the promising biochemistry engineer walking a glittering path in a top company.

In March 2020, however, the success story takes a sudden turn. Magali leaves Materialise. She immerses herself in systemic coaching and decides to pursue a deeper integration of people and technology as a social entrepreneur. In January 2022, her company MINET - Mind Innovators is floated above.

Deeper self

Why this seemingly sudden turnaround? It is Magali embracing and rediscovering the apparent contradiction within herself. The Magali who thus no longer sees the world in terms of dichotomies and no longer accepts having to choose between either this or that. The Magali who is both engineer and coach and entrepreneur and performer and who wants to use this combination of talents and competences to help others.

I choose every day to go in search of which version of myself I really want to be’. The result of years of deep explora-tion of and into the deeper self. A process in which ratio, emotions and seemingly separate identities are allowed to merge into a new, better and even best version of that Self. “I have shed many tears in my life. I have not died from them. They have only brought me closer to my core”.

‘The core of all things is endless,’ wrote Felix Timmermans. That core turns out to be a universe in itself. Full of possibilities, discoveries and, above all, bursting with mental energy for personal growth.

MINET

This brings us seamlessly to the mission of Magali’s company: ‘At MINET I empower people and organisations to act on societal change. I co-create fertile soils for change by strongly focusing on innate talents of the individual, the characteristics of the system they are part of and the unique points of contact between the two’.

This mission cannot be pigeonholed as engineering science or naive woolly rhetoric. MINET’s mission has magic. It is the magic of Magali.

Yves Persoons

www.magaliminet.be