Our story

Kick Moors and Hermen Visser, started to jointly coach Veni candidates, a personal grant of the Dutch Research Council (NWO), in 2011. Hermen applied his journalistic and design skills to help candidates with strategy, script, and slides. Once the presentation was set, Kick, at the time HRM adviser working at Leiden University, took over. He worked on the more personal aspects such as understanding social stress and dealing with it, body language, use of voice, and answering questions. Developing and further improving teaching methods is a passion we share, and over the years we finetuned our formula to all its finesses and variations. We translated our ideas in several courses and workshops and worked for the majority of the Dutch universities.

Then the coronavirus outbreak happened. It felt like the end of our business. We had been coaching in-person so far. But, early in the pandemic our clients asked for online courses and coaching. In a few months we adapted our ideas and methodology to this new normal. It worked. Our coachees highly valued our online products. Moreover, our feedback sessions provided the contact many young researchers in social isolation longed for.

Although covid feels like ages ago, online communication is here to stay. ERC and NWO continued to organize research grant interviews online, making online coaching a more appropriate option than before. Thanks to the online availability, researchers from all over Europe started to request our support. In the past years, the enthusiasm of our coachees and the high success rate of our trajectory resulted in growth beyond the possibilities of the two of us.

That is why we decided to start Delta Grant Support. It is where we make our approach available to every applicant. Thanks to its online nature we can continue improving our methodology and adapt it to changes in ERC and NWO regulations. Moreover, it is where we can connect our growing team of experts with researchers around the globe. It is where we want to make the difference.