Speaker · Facilitator · Coach
The Medicine of Connection
"I have deeply connected with humans from all walks, prisoners and police officers, CEOs and indigenous elders, children in orphanages and youth on the streets. The medicine to restore trust, confidence, motivation and life force is always the same."
At sixteen, Alain Lagger became the youngest officer on the Dutch police force. Eight years later, a life-or-death moment changed everything. Not just how he saw himself, but how he saw every person he had ever served. It propelled him onto a deeper journey: to explore what it truly means to be of service. Real service.
What followed was a life spent at the edges of human experience. He worked with children in Mexican orphanages and youth in Los Angeles. He sat with village elders in indigenous communities and counseled inmates in Colombian and US prisons. He moved between the favelas of Medellín and the streets of Watts, between US and Latin American boardrooms, always asking the same question: what does it actually take for people to come home to themselves?
Then he made an unexpected choice. He traded a busy life traveling and living in Los Angeles for seven years in the jungle of Costa Rica. He became a partner at Brave Earth, a retreat center rooted in regenerative practice and indigenous wisdom, and founded Fuerza de Amor to serve the surrounding community and its youth. He became a jungle guide, teaching visitors how reconnecting to nature opens something in us that the noise of modern life tends to close. He stopped almost everything else. He sat with what he had lived.
But watching the growing division and disconnect in the world around him, he felt it was time to take everything he had gathered and carry it into as many spaces as possible. Today Alain works with corporations, law enforcement agencies, prisons, and communities across four continents. He pioneered the role of Director of Happiness at Open English, aligning 2,500 employees across seven countries. His work has been featured in Forbes, El Tiempo, Santo Domingo Times, and Exame.
The challenges people experience are never the same in expression, yet the medicine to restore connection, life force and harmonize one's experience is always the same.
Whether the room is a boardroom, a prison yard, a police precinct, a school, or a circle of men in the jungle, Alain brings the same thing: presence, honesty, and the conviction that connection transforms. Explore the areas below.
Fuerza de Amor, Brave Earth, schools, at-risk youth, and grassroots work across three continents.
Explore →Private retreats, men's work, family retreats, and one-to-one personal coaching.
Retreats → Personal Coaching →As Director of Happiness at Open English, Alain designed and led the human experience for 2,500 employees across seven countries, aligning teams with core values and mission in ways that were genuinely felt, not just communicated. His work entailed a cultural overhaul that is still alive in the company today.
Across decades of work inside organizations, Alain sits with people, listens to what is actually alive in the room, and builds from there. His corporate work spans keynotes that shift rooms, offsite experiences that reconnect leadership teams, workshops that target specific friction points, and deep consulting engagements. He has worked with multinationals, regional leaders, and fast-growing companies across Latin America and beyond. The throughline is always the same: when people feel genuinely seen, valued, and connected to something meaningful, they perform differently. They stay longer. They carry the organization forward.
Organizations that have worked with Alain have seen measurable reductions in sick days and staff rotation, stronger team alignment, higher sales performance, and a deeper employee loyalty to the brand. Cultural shifts happen. Teams realign with the core values and mission of the organization in ways that go beyond a poster on the wall or a slide in a presentation. These are the natural results of people who feel like they belong to something real.
"I offered Alain the role of Director of Happiness because I wanted the benefits and changes I had personally experienced through his coaching to reach my entire company and its 2,500 employees."
"Alain offered us a life changing experience."
"He reminds us of the things that we tend to forget: the fact that we are all human beings and are all equally valuable."
Across three decades, Alain has worked inside every part of the criminal justice system, as a police officer, as a youth worker, and as a facilitator inside prisons in Colombia and the United States. That range gives him a perspective few people carry: the officer, the young person at risk, and the incarcerated human being are not as far apart as the system would suggest. Connection is what separates a life that hardens from one that opens.
Alain began his career at sixteen on a youth team in Amsterdam Nieuw-West, led by a detective who saw something in him early. From that team he was invited to join the police academy, becoming the youngest officer on the Dutch police force. He was coaching youth from his very first days on the force, alongside his regular duties. After years of service, he made the decision to leave the force and follow a deeper calling — moving to Los Angeles, where his work with law enforcement took on a new dimension.
In the United States, Alain worked with the LAPD, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and departments across Latin America. His programs center on values, resilience, community connection, and the inner life of the officer. He has served as a guest professor at California State University criminology programs and delivered a talk for the Colombian Peace Process, both on video. Through the VIDA program, a 16-week youth intervention run with the LA County Sheriff's Department, he worked as an instructor with at-risk youth aged 11 to 17.
Officers who go through Alain's programs report greater resilience, a stronger sense of personal values, and a renewed connection to the communities they serve. The weight of the work becomes more manageable. Relationships within teams deepen. The bridge between law enforcement and the people they protect becomes something officers feel equipped to build.
Over 5,000 incarcerated men and women reached across Colombia and the United States. In collaboration with Acción Interna and Colombian institutions, Alain brings programs centered on identity, responsibility, and the possibility of transformation into places where those words are rarely spoken.
For Alain, working inside prisons was a natural extension of his years as a police officer, the other side of the same story. Looking deeply into the lives and needs of incarcerated people became a form of redemption work. It reshaped his understanding of justice, of responsibility, and of how connected we all truly are. The line between those who enforce the law and those who break it is thinner than most people want to admit.
Inside some of the most challenging environments imaginable, participants consistently report a renewed sense of purpose and a different relationship with themselves. Men and women who have spent years defined by what they did begin to reconnect with who they are, because they now have a deeper understanding of their story, their traumas, and the deeper reasons for their situation. That reconnection is the foundation of genuine rehabilitation, and it ripples outward into families and communities long after the program ends.
Prison Program · Colombia
Video coming soon
Prison Program · United States
Video coming soon
Alain grew up in Amsterdam Nieuw-West and started his career working with youth before ever wearing a uniform. He knows what it feels like to be a young person in an environment that does not believe in you. That knowing has never left him.
While teaching meditation in boardrooms and speaking on many stages, he sat with children in Mexican orphanages, walked alongside homeless youth in Medellín, organized summer programs for kids in Watts, Los Angeles with the LAPD, and worked with an indigenous tribe in Panama. When you reach a young person before the system closes around them, you change the direction of a life.
Young people who go through Alain's programs consistently show increased motivation, a stronger sense of identity, and a deeper connection to themselves and their peers. Attendance improves. Engagement in the classroom shifts. When a young person discovers that their story has value and that they are seen, something moves in them that will stay with them throughout life.
Elementary School Program · United States
Video coming soon
In 2015, Alain made a decisive move. He traded a busy life traveling and living in Los Angeles for seven years in the jungle of Costa Rica. He became a partner at Brave Earth (braveearth.com), a retreat center rooted in regenerative practice, indigenous wisdom, and human development. He became a jungle guide, teaching visitors how reconnecting to nature opens something in us that the noise of modern life tends to close.
From inside that work, and out of a desire to give back to the local community surrounding Brave Earth, Alain founded Fuerza de Amor, a grassroots resilience network focused on supporting the youth, families, and communities of the region. What started as a local effort remains a living pilot in Costa Rica, a proof of what becomes possible when connection is treated as the foundation of community life. The learnings from that work now inform everything Alain carries into every community he enters.
The communities that Alain engages with develop stronger local leadership, deeper intergenerational bonds, and a shared language around resilience and connection. Through Fuerza de Amor, young people step into roles of responsibility. This leads to a more resilient and connected community.
Many men have never learned how to express their creativity, their nourishing sides, their vulnerability. They have never been taught to honor the feminine, as she lives in and around them, in nature, in relationship, in the depths of their own being. The cost of that gap shows up everywhere: in how men lead, how they love, how they relate to themselves.
Alain organizes private retreats, family retreats, and youth retreats: immersive experiences that combine nature, meditation, honest conversation, and practices drawn from 30 years of working with human beings in every kind of environment. Each retreat is shaped around the people in the room and the moment they are in.
Among these, he has a particular affinity for supporting men in becoming better communicators, husbands, friends, and partners. Through Her, a men's retreat that began at Brave Earth in Costa Rica and is now traveling, participants explore their relationship to the feminine as it lives within and around them, as lived experience. Many men have never been given the space to express vulnerability, to develop their nourishing sides, or to examine how they honor the feminine in nature, in relationship, and in themselves. Her creates that space.
Alain also works deeply with women. In that work, he aims to be a clean masculine mirror: a safe, grounded presence that supports women in their practice of full expression, in reconnecting to their innate wisdom and power, and in trusting what they already know.
Alongside this, Alain carries a private coaching practice, working with a small number of individuals at a time. People at a crossroads. Leaders under pressure. Anyone ready to be genuinely honest about what they are building and why.
Available year-round
Corporate, criminal justice, community, and coaching engagements.
June & July 2026
Available locally for speaking, workshops, and consulting.
By arrangement
Open to engagements across Latin America, Europe, and beyond. Reach out to discuss.
Whether you are interested in booking Alain as a speaker, exploring a retreat, commissioning a consulting engagement, or simply reaching out — the door is open. Fill in the form and Alain's team will be in touch.
Santo Domingo Times · Los Más Atractivos 2013
Santo Domingo Times · Liderazgo · Director de Felicidad
Shine Magazine · Happy Tips · Año Nuevo, Metas Cumplidas
Revista Mercado · Be Happy · Conference Lunch · Santo Domingo
The Zoo LA — TV Interview
Connection is always the medicine.
Alain Lagger