The team
Two coaches, two backgrounds — education and software — and one shared passion for Argentine Tango.
Karin Butt
Building upon more than twenty years of experience in teaching, Karin is our expert in teaching, organising educational institutions and coaching teachers. She led a primary school in Germany for three years, where she was responsible for directing and coordinating educational, administrative and counselling activities.
Her areas of work include the development and evaluation of educational programmes to ensure conformance to state and school-board standards, as well as working with teachers on improving their performance and with students and parents on educational and behavioural issues. Currently she supports and monitors exchange programmes between universities and other educational organisations in the UK and in Germany.
An eye-opening experience that changed her way of motivating people was a seminar on Inner Game Coaching with Christian Maier. Through her interest in tango music she has also become an enthusiastic tango dancer, which influences her view of life and work in the way Ricardo Vidort put it: “When you dance tango, you must give everything. If you can't do that, don't dance!”
Shamsuddin Butt
Starting out as a psychologist, Shamsuddin has spent more than 20 years designing, developing and testing software. Although this work was as technical as inventing a new programming language in the early '90s, his psychology background has always made him put people first. One special challenge in user-interface design was developing a prototype kiosk terminal for the German health sector, demanding accessibility for people with major sensory and motor disabilities.
Having seen many projects and held leadership roles as project manager, head of development departments and start-up company director, he is well acquainted with the difficult task of leadership, especially in the still somewhat chaotic field of software development.
A Postgraduate Certificate in Coaching and Development, where he learned from British coaches such as Sue Slocombe and Charles Brook, refreshed his psychological skills after years of software development and provided many new insights and skills. His passion for Argentine Tango made him think about using its subtle wisdom about human contact for people-oriented work off the dance floor.