Meet Ava
Expat Family & Life Transition Coach
Leadership & Expat Transition Advisor
Ava Houkes is an Expat Family & Life Transition Coach, Leadership & Expat Transition Advisor, and the founder of Above the Common, dedicated to helping individuals, couples, and organisations unshelf potential and bring expat life and complex transitions fully alive again.
The moments that shaped my work
My mission was shaped by my mother, a brilliant “multipreneur” whose beautifully developed business ideas were printed, bound, and placed on a shelf. She was waiting for the “right moment” to launch: the perfect sign, the perfect readiness, the perfect courage.
That moment never came.
When my mother passed away suddenly at 57, I realised just how many ideas, gifts and possibilities had left the world with her. That loss planted a truth that guides my work to this day:
Potential is fragile, and life cannot be postponed.
In the years that followed, I experienced my own series of turning points.
A significant health wake-up call pushed me to rebuild my wellbeing from the inside out: releasing excess weight, restoring vitality, and redesigning my relationship with myself.
That's also when I broke long-standing patterns of staying in relationships, both personal and professional, that diminished my potential or drained my energy.
And when I moved from the Netherlands to Australia as an expat spouse, I encountered one of the most profound shifts of all: redefining identity without any of the familiar anchors of career, community and structure. It led to a pivotal question I now help others explore:
"Who am I when all the old roles fall away?"
These experiences form the heart of my philosophy:
Life is never meant to be put on a shelf, waiting to be lived again "someday", unintentionally muting the miracle of life.
We must unshelf, and protect people's right to live life FULLY.
In this short video, I share the real reason I do this work.
It started long before coaching became my profession. It started with moments that asked me to stop waiting and start living.
If you want to understand my work, start here.
My mission, philosophy and work
The reason I founded Above the Common is to help people protect and restore human authorship, so life is fully lived now, not postponed for later.
My mission is to ensure fewer people leave their brilliance, ideas and unlived possibilities on the shelf. I work at the intersection of leadership, identity, and transition, where capable, intelligent people quietly lose their sense of agency inside roles they have chosen, succeeded in, or relocated for. My work ensures that success, service, or relocation does not come at the cost of aliveness.
Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, systems thinking and my lived experience of reinvention, I've created several frameworks, including my signature Reclaim & Rise Program™ , a structured yet deeply human method for identity work and life design.
Today, I operate as an independent professional providing coaching, advisory, and facilitation services in complex, cross-cultural, and high-stakes environments.
I'm supporting:
Senior professionals and leaders
Partners of diplomats and internationally mobile professionals
International and government-adjacent organisations
Individuals navigating identity-level transitions within high-responsibility contexts
With my work, I'm guiding my clients to reclaim authorship and sustainable authority in how they consciously live, love and lead, across identity, relationships, and leadership. Reclaiming, in my work, means re-inhabiting what was always theirs. Not importing power, but restoring access to it.
This includes:
Reorienting identity after disruption or relocation
Strengthening leadership capability and decision-making
Restoring clarity, agency, and personal authority
Increasing resilience without hardening or self-suppression
Aligning external responsibility with internal coherence
My work combines deep identity-level sense-making, neuroscience-informed change processes, structured, documented engagement pathways, high-trust, confidential advisory environments and organisational collaboration where appropriate.
Services are delivered through:
Structured one-on-one engagements
Advisory projects
Workshops and facilitated sessions
Educational talks integrated with consulting work
My coaching combines reflective depth with practical action, the kind that creates meaningful, sustainable change.
Ava Houkes
Expat Family & Life Transition Coach
Leadership & Expat Transition Advisor
MSc Clinical Psychology
What good coaching requires
A lot gets called coaching. Standards vary.
This video shows you what I mean by good coaching.
Good coaching should leave you feeling clearer, steadier, and more like yourself.
Here I share the four pillars that make that possible, and how I work with both care and honesty.
Training, credentials and professional background
Based in Googong, NSW (just outside of Canberra, ACT), Australia and working closely with the international and diplomatic community in the ACT, Ava supports expats, expat partners and others concerned with international life transitions.
Ava holds an MSc in Clinical Psychology and previously worked in management coaching and organisational development in the Netherlands. In Australia, she operates as an independent coach, consultant and facilitator and does not provide clinical or registered psychological services. She blends science and deep human insight into her services.
Ava has supported leaders, professionals, and expat and diplomatic spouses and partners. She has facilitated culture and leadership programs for major Dutch institutions and international teams, taught psychology skills at Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands), created systems for workflow and evaluation, and coordinated global training events of up to 1,500 participants.
Her work is known for its clarity, depth and practicality - a combination that helps clients create real, lasting change rather than temporary motivation.
To explore how people experience working with Ava, go to the testimonials page.
