About me
I’m Erik Broms. I’ve worked in product leadership for over 20 years in the technology and software industry. And based on what I saw happening to people, ineffective line management, the human cost of the challenges and struggles that you have to deal with in the tech industry, I made a decision to work as a coach. I believe that what drives tech is human power. As a professional coach I want to help people to embrace the mindset that if they want to lead people effectively, they first have to learn how to lead themselves. Because the biggest asset you have as a leader, is yourself.
My mission and drive
As coach I love to connect and engage with people and learn about their life aspirations. My mission is to give you the impetus you need, to inspire you to start living, acting and leading with more focus and purpose. I focus on building mutual trust between us, so we can work together and you can learn how to create new realities that work better for you. What really helps, is that I understand what tech leaders and professionals are facing, because I was one of them for 20 plus years.
Impetus: force, energy, something that makes a process or activity happen, or happen more quickly
Starting out in software
I was born in 1975 in a suburb to Stockholm, Sweden. I graduated from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH) in 2000. Fresh out of university, with my master’s degree in business development and media technology, I moved to Stockholm and worked there as a software development consultant at PwC Consulting for a couple of years. When the IT bubble burst in 2002, I found myself without a job. Philips Consumer Electronics offered me the opportunity to switch and gain more experience as a developer, and so I moved to the Netherlands.
Career in the technology industry
After a year or two, I joined a start-up where my job responsibilities changed with the same pace as the seasons, and soon found myself as a technical product manager, juggling many balls in the air. It was demanding, but strangely addictive. Ever since then I continued to work in the intersection between technology and business, in international companies. I joined TomTom, a fast-growing (or rather, exploding) Dutch company that launched the first personal navigation device ever.
In 12 years time I worked as a program manager, project lead manager, manager product metrics and KPIs, internal auditor and senior product line manager and again found my jobs incredible challenging yet equally addictive. However, I also experienced nearly annual reorganisations with teams having to repeatedly re-form and re-define their scope.
Having stuck with product management as focus area for several years, I joined another well-known Dutch company: Parkmobile. Here I continued with the mix of product management and team leadership responsibilities. The technology industry is rife with turbulence: I witnessed a series of CEOs and the company being acquired by new owners twice, the second being the Swedish company EasyPark. And meanwhile, the company never stopped growing in number of customers and employees.
Impetus Coaching
While my work throughout the years in the tech industry in many ways was rewarding, when it came to leading people I often found that there wasn’t enough time and support for people to learn and grow on the job. When during a training I got the question: “What do you want to change in the next five years?” Without hesitation and to my own surprise, I wrote: “I want to start coaching people.” After some thinking and soul-searching, I made the decision to pursue what I felt is my calling.
I took one-on-one sessions to become a coach. In January 2022 I started working as an internal performance coach while embarking on a programme to become an ontological coach and working towards becoming an Associate Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation (ICF). After a year, I started my own company: Impetus Coaching. In June 2023 I earned my ICF ACC certification. I earned my Ontological Coach certification in June 2024. As I gained more coaching experience, I earned my ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) certification in January 2025.