DISCOVER HER POWER WITH YFKE OSSENTJUK OF ROLLERCOASTER

TEXT & INTERVIEW: KADDIE ROTHE, GOALGIRLS* | PHOTOS: DORFGIRL CAFÉ

The most interesting businesses right now are not being built by people who fit the system. They are being built by people who refuse to be discouraged by it. A new GOALGIRLS* column about women building businesses differently.

There are many interviews with inspiring female founders. Most begin with the same questions and end with the same polished answers. But businesses do not change through polished answers. Maybe women do not need to become more confident. Maybe we just need to stop asking them to make their confidence comfortable for everyone else. There is something deeply satisfying about a woman who knows exactly how much space she takes up and does not apologise for it.

Who says:

Yes, I run this company.
Yes, I control the budget.
Yes, I made that decision.
And no, I am not his assistant.

They change when we question who gets trusted with money, responsibility and power in the first place.

That is exactly what DISCOVER HER POWER is about.

This time: Yfke, co-founder of Rollercoaster Production.

MEET THE WOMAN BEHIND THE MILLIONS

Rollercoaster Production organises photo and video productions and events around the world. And Yfke does exactly what the company name promises: she makes the seemingly impossible happen.

50,000 euro production? Millions? Ten projects at once? Bring it.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about Yfke is not what she can handle.

It is that she is done making that competence more digestible.

Because women are still taught to soften their certainty. To package ambition nicely. To make power look effortless, friendly and preferably not too intimidating.

Yfke does not.

And good for her.

MY POWER STARTS WHERE OTHERS GIVE UP

Kaddie:Where does your power come from?

Yfke: “My power lies where others give up. I don’t think in ‘impossible’. I think in solutions. Whether it is 50,000 euro or a million-euro budget, I keep the numbers under control and still deliver. I refuse to be put into one box. Flexibility and precision are not contradictions. They are my method.”

DELETE THE GATEKEEPERS

Kaddie: If your business was a movement, what would it destroy?

Yfke: “I would abolish gatekeeping. The idea that big budgets and financial responsibility belong to men, while women are responsible for the details. Who would lose power? The decision-makers who automatically give a man the million-euro budget and a woman the small project to practice.”

And yes: we are allowed to be angry about that. Female rage does not have to mean screaming or smashing things. Sometimes it looks like refusing the smaller project. Taking the bigger budget. And being good at it.

I’M NOT SITTING NEXT TO THE BOSS

Kaddie: Which assumption about women in business should be deleted?

Yfke: “That a woman sitting next to a man must automatically be his assistant. In meetings, I’m regularly mistaken for my business partner Philip’s assistant instead of the co-founder. I’m not sitting next to the boss. I am one.”

Honestly, frame that one.

WHEN POWER SHIFTS

Kaddie: What would be different if more women led companies?

Yfke: “Decisions would happen faster because less time would be wasted on ego games. Money would be distributed differently: not based on networks and confidence, but on who actually delivers. That would become uncomfortable for everyone whose contacts have taken them further than their actual performance.”

Maybe female leadership does not need to be softer. Maybe it can simply be less interested in performing power and more interested in using it.

UNSILENCED

Kaddie: There’s a space for you right here to say what needs to be said.

Yfke: “I’m tired of explaining why I’m sitting at the table. Nobody asks Philip if he’s really the co-founder. They ask me. I calculate million-euro budgets, negotiate with suppliers and keep ten balls in the air at once. I don’t need to prove that I belong here anymore. I’m already here.”

Yfke is not asking women to become better at playing the game. She is asking why competence still looks male until proven otherwise. And then she gets back to work. Oh. And did we mention that she is also a mother of two?

This stage belongs to women who claim it.

Check @heygoalgirls on Instagram to read more.

GOALGIRLS* is an international FLINTA* creative collective and agency. Follow us on: @heygoalgirls

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