Barbara Arnst - Team Topologies Advocate
Barbara Arnst - Team Topologies Advocate
Barbara is a transformation leader and lifelong learner with a 25+ year career spanning both business and academia. She is currently VP at Telenet, leading the company’s Agile Transformation. Previously, she was a Principal at Bain & Company, a Partner at PE firm Gimv, and COO at Groupon, an internet scale-up.
Barbara is passionate about helping organizations become more adaptive, effective, and meaningful places to work. She works with leaders to reimagine operating models and make deliberate choices that drive and sustain change. She is excited to continue expanding her impact through keynotes, advisory roles, and board engagements, exploring the depth of organizational transformation.
Based in Antwerp, Belgium, Barbara can often be found running—or walking a very cute golden retriever.
You can reach her via:
Team Topologies Advocacy
As a transformation leader, I help companies rewire their operating models to achieve better outcomes. I deliberately use the word rewire because true transformation requires more than structural changes—it demands a fundamental shift in leadership beliefs, practices, and ways of working.
I am passionate about the intuitiveness of Team Topologies and the principles that underpin them, applying them at scale by:
Designing teams for flow and relentlessly managing cognitive load
Defining end-to-end business and IT boundaries using Domain-Driven Design, creating modular building blocks for an organizational blueprint
Shifting leadership mindsets, enabling leaders to act as architects who empower teams to continuously sense and adapt
I have experienced the power of these ideas firsthand at Telenet, where I led a transformation journey that evolved the company from a large, siloed organization into a network of nimble, innovative, and engaged teams. I look forward to expanding on this journey and helping more organizations unlock their full potential!
I’ve had the opportunity to share Telenet’s transformation journey and how Team Topologies principles inspired the Enterprise-level Operating Model redesign at key industry events:
Team Topologies Stream of Teams 2025 → Watch here
Enterprise Tech Leadership Summit (ETLS) Europe 2024 (by IT Revolution) → Watch here
Enterprise Tech Leadership Summit (ETLS) Las Vegas 2023 (by IT Revolution) → Watch here
