Derek van Zoonen and Pete Deemer met in psychotherapy training and quickly became close friends and collaborators. They share a conviction that the questions worth asking often can’t be answered alone, and that inquiry is richer in good company. The Pause is the work they’ve chosen to do together.
Pete Deemer
Co-facilitator
Pete Deemer spent two decades in Silicon Valley (as a company founder, senior executive at leading enterprises in the digital economy, and as a thought leader in the agile software movement) before he turned toward the questions success couldn’t answer.
He holds a BA from Harvard and an MSc in Psychology and Neuroscience from King’s College London, and is completing a four-year training in Hakomi, a mindfulness-based, body-oriented psychotherapy.
He knows burnout not as a concept but as lived experience, and understands what it means to build a life that looks successful from the outside while feeling hollow within. His work now bridges the world of high performance with the somatic and contemplative traditions that helped him find his way back to himself.
He brings the rare combination of someone who speaks the language of business and someone who is doing the deeper work of asking what it was all for.
Derek van Zoonen
Co-facilitator
Derek van Zoonen has a background in academic philosophy and psychology, but came to realize that the questions he cares about most can’t be answered by thinking alone.
He holds a PhD in philosophy, with training at the University of Oxford, Columbia University, Humboldt Universität in Berlin, and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He is completing a four-year training in Hakomi, a mindfulness-based, body-oriented psychotherapy. He is affiliated with the University of Oslo, where he researches philosophical and psychological approaches to well-being.
His work bridges philosophical and psychological inquiry into happiness, meaning, and the good life with over a decade of contemplative practice and direct experience with altered states of consciousness, giving him a deep familiarity with the territory that opens up when ordinary consciousness shifts.
He brings the spirit of Socratic questioning to everything he does: he listens deeply and kindly but is not afraid to ask uncomfortable questions when they help people live more examined lives.
Together, they hold a space that is both rigorous and tender.
Reserve Your Place
