About the founder

In Anne's Words

Hey, I'm Anne, thanks for being here.

Let me introduce myself briefly.

I help people find the stories they’re ready to tell
or ready to change.

I work with founders, leaders, and teams at the stage before communication begins - when the vision is clear internally, but not yet coherent in words, strategy, or structure.

My work starts with foundations: business objectives, values, and intent.

From there, we build the clarity that makes communication meaningful, aligned, and effective.

I work to bring the essence of people and businesses into focus.

That essence becomes the foundation for everything that follows. Think business objectives, strategy, and communication of course. For me, everything starts with establishing clarity around what you’re building and why, before any decisions are made about messaging or expression.

From there, we work with mission, purpose, vision, and values. Actually not in that order, and not as statements to display, but as living reference points that guide your leadership, behaviour, and even growth. When these are clear and embodied, communication becomes simpler, more consistent, and more credible.

My work is about drawing out what’s already there and shaping it into something unforgettable. Helping you see what makes the essence of your offer distinctive, and giving it form so it can be carried forward with integrity and impact.

What I do

“I believe that everything in life can be solved by better communication. My mission is to help people tell a better story.”

How I work

Connection doesn’t start with messaging. It starts with coherence.

I work with people and organisations who want their communication to feel true - not persuasive, not performative, but grounded in who they actually are and what they’re building.

My role is to create the conditions for that clarity to emerge. We start by slowing down and looking beneath the surface: intent, values, assumptions, and direction. From there, expression becomes simpler, more natural, and more consistent.

I draw on coaching, facilitation, mindfulness practices, and solid business experience. I work one-to-one and in groups, often through workshops that tap into collective intelligence and reveal what’s already present but not yet articulated.

The result isn’t louder communication. It’s communication that holds.

Le Trente is a social learning studio where individuals and organisations develop coherence through story, reflection, and shared inquiry.

My work is grounded in more than twenty years of building and scaling global businesses.

I began my career in luxury fashion, working across London, Paris, and New York with Christian Louboutin. Over the years, I supported the business across retail, PR, wholesale, and operations, before becoming General Manager in the UK and later the brand’s first Global Head of Communications.

That experience shaped how I work today. I’m not a specialist who sees one slice of the picture. I’m a generalist with deep, hands-on understanding of how businesses actually function. I draw from creative strategy and communication, to teams, operations, and more.

I’ve worked closely with legal, HR, IT, and leadership teams, led global organisations, and seen what happens when vision, operations, and communication aren’t aligned.

Alongside this, I trained as a coach. And I'm a mindfulness instructor. And facilitator. That combination between business experience and the other combined practice is what underpins my work now. It allows me to support people not just in what they say or build, but in how they think, decide, and lead.

This is why I work as a consultant and coach, and why I’m building a team to carry this methodology forward - so that all of that experience can be brought to bear, thoughtfully and coherently, for the people I work with.

My Expertise

A black and white picture of coach and consultant Anne V Muhlethaler of AVM Consulting

Anne V Muhlethaler of AVM Consulting on the stage at WWD Digital in New York City

For the last couple of years, people have asked me how it all fits together. "You're a mindfulness teacher AND a brand strategist? You do coaching AND storytelling workshops?"

Here's what I've finally understood: they're not separate pursuits. They're the same thing.

After 17 years at Christian Louboutin — including six years as SVP of Global Communications — I learned that true luxury isn't about price or exclusivity. It's about craft, time, and intention. Every detail matters. But I also learned something else: despite the external success, something was missing.

My life had direction (established by company culture, industry expectations, competence, gender), but that direction wasn't mine. I had no personal projects beyond work. And if I track my own happiness levels, I can safely say they bottomed out during that period.

Everything changed when I started pursuing something that was truly mine: becoming a mindfulness teacher. That single meaningful project transformed my life by every measure — energy, health, sense of purpose, quality of relationships.

Not because I "achieved" the goal (though I did), but because I was engaged in meaningful pursuit. Of course, it helped that I was studying a life-changing spiritual practice too, guided by amazing teachers.

Where life meets story

Research shows we're built for this. Professor Brian Little's decades of studying human behavior, including how we connect to goals, confirms: "We are our personal projects." Not our job titles. Not our roles. Our personally meaningful projects — the things we're actively pursuing.

Aristotle called it eudaimonia: flourishing through engagement with what matters. Not happiness as a destination, but happiness as being engaged in the process.

But here's the paradox: while goal-setting helps us envision our future, true fulfillment only exists in the present moment. We need BOTH the meaningful project AND the daily practice of connecting to what we care about.

This is where life meets story theory. Both in life and in good stories, there is pursuit of a goal, movement, and a value shift — sometimes positive, sometimes negative, but never hellish stuckness. It's not just that story is how we communicate. It's that when we engage in meaningful personal projects, when we intentionally connect to what lights us up, we're living in a way that creates narrative. It’s our very own mini (or not so mini) hero's journey.

Story is the mode through which we share our personal projects, the movements of life itself.

Why storytelling, coaching, and mindfulness

My work sits at the crossroads of these three disciplines because that's where meaningful pursuit actually happens. I should know.

- Storytelling gives us the structure — understanding our narrative, finding our direction, surfacing our values, identifying our current "assignment"
- Coaching helps us move — getting unstuck, building capacity, staying in pursuit when we hit our growth edges
- Mindfulness & compassion practices help us notice the narratives our minds create (recurring patterns, helpful and unhelpful stories), work with what is rather than what we wish for, stay embodied rather than disembodied, and train our attention—choosing where to focus in an age designed to scatter us. These practices also open our hearts, creating new patterns of relating to ourselves and others with loving awareness. This is the rich tradition often reduced to the single word "mindfulness."

In between all three, the key practice is that of allowing ourselves to ask powerful questions. And listening to the answers. Whether they come from within ourselves, or someone else (in your team, in a group). As the famed story expert Robert McKee says: "Stories are how we learn without explanations."

This is why I founded Le Trente—creating spaces (both in Geneva and online) where people can explore, shape, share, and listen to stories. Whether through my signature "Story of You" programme, hands-on workshops like Dreaming into Being and Story Alchemy, or the inspiring salons I host, I'm passionate about helping individuals and teams get clear on who they are and how they want to show up in the world—and tell a better story that helps them connect to the people they care about.

Because I believe in learning from stories—and because many of my own biggest a-ha moments came from listening to podcasts—I host Out of the Clouds (turning five years old in June 2025). It's where I have deep conversations with fascinating guests about creativity, leadership, presence, and what it means to live a meaningful life, built on asking powerful questions and truly listening to the answers.

The work

My work focuses on asking the right questions, unearthing stories, and crafting compelling narratives—all in the service of connection, to self and others.

Yes, everyone needs meaningful projects that are genuinely theirs (not imposed by corporate culture or external expectations). But we also need to sit, ask questions, listen to ourselves, get inspired by others, and then take the next right action.

Sometimes that means figuring out what the right direction is. Sometimes it's getting unstuck when you know where you want to go but can't move. And sometimes it's learning how to tell the story of your journey so you can connect with the people who matter.

As a facilitator, story architect, coach, and Loving Kindness teacher, that's what I help people do.

Because the pursuit makes the life. The pursuit makes the plot.

TO COMPLETE THE PICTURE

A singer since my teens, you’ll find me using my voice in several ways: I am also a writer, podcaster, and a certified meditation and yoga teacher.

I am an avid online learner, enjoy hosting my signature salons and generally Zoom in from Geneva, Switzerland, where I live with my two cats, Lalah and Kellan, and my dog Nandi.

Anne Mühlethaler as a toddler holding a microphone with the sea in the background

If you're looking for someone who can help you (or your team) unlock your story, rediscover genuine connection, and create meaningful movement, let's talk.