STIKA // Rakel Steinberg - Executive Coach & SAR Leader

The Founder

RAKEL
STEINBERG

Founder, STIKA - Nature-Led Executive Coach

Rakel Steinberg is a nature-led executive coach, award-winning tech entrepreneur, and active Search & Rescue leader in Iceland. She designed The Terrain as the flagship leadership program of STIKA.

Fluent across both technical systems and human ones, Rakel has spent her career as a translator between engineering complexity and executive decision-making - a rare combination that shapes every aspect of how The Terrain is designed and facilitated.

Her work sits at the intersection of leadership, pressure, and presence. How people make decisions when stakes are real. How they hold themselves when comfort disappears. How they lead without burning out or losing integrity.

Trail-Tested Leadership

Rakel brings strategic clarity, grounded presence, and the kind of honest challenge that makes leaders sharper - not smaller. This work is direct, structured, and designed for people who carry real responsibility.

Her formal background includes a BSc in Computer Engineering and a Master's in Human Resource Management and Occupational Psychology - a combination that bridges systems thinking with human behavior under load: decision-making, performance, identity, and nervous-system capacity in high-stakes environments.

She is a Techstars alumna, Forbes-recognized founder, and was named Nerd of the Year in Iceland in 2012. She has spent decades in tech and startups, leading through complexity, ambiguity, and pressure - where clarity and execution matter more than perfect plans.

BSc Computer Engineering

MSc Human Resource Management & Occupational Psychology

ICF-Certified Executive Coach (ACC)

Techstars Alumna

Forbes-Recognized Entrepreneur

Nerd of the Year, Iceland 2012

Founder, Skema - Iceland (acquired by Reykjavík University)

Founder, reKode Education - Redmond, WA

In the Field

SEARCH
& RESCUE

Rakel is an active member of Icelandic Search & Rescue, leading Super Jeep operations across glaciers, river crossings, and terrain where mistakes carry real consequences. That environment rewards one thing: competence. Calm judgment. Precise execution. Teamwork that holds under pressure. Nothing else survives out there.

This is the same terrain as The Terrain. The same conditions. The same stakes. Participants are in expert hands.

This is where strategy stops being theory - and becomes a decision.

Two Mountains

Nature doesn't negotiate. Rakel learned this the hard way - twice.

On her 40th birthday, against medical advice - her heart carrying the accumulated load of running a startup across two countries while getting her two children settled into a new culture - she hiked Kilimanjaro. Climbing a mountain and running a startup have more in common than most people think. The altitude made that comparison more accurate than she expected.

Every altitude level hit her. On the summit push, with roughly two hours left, her oxygen saturation had dropped too low - blue lips, the body giving its clearest signal. She turned back.

It was the right call. She knew it. And it was still hard.

The mountain didn't punish the ambition. It simply made the cost visible.

In 2018, she shattered and dislocated her ankle and was told not to expect to hike or run again. The rebuild took four years. She slowed down. Barefoot shoes. Movement that stayed connected to the ground. The practices that held the rebuild - meditation, breathwork, cold exposure, deliberate movement - were not a detour from the terrain. They were how she learned to read it differently.

What the land was offering had always been there. It only becomes visible when you stop forcing the pace.

Be comfortable being uncomfortable. Pace matters. Ego is expensive. Knowing when to stop is not weakness. The summit is rarely where the real learning happens.

The Name

A STIKA is a trail marker - the wooden stake that guides hikers through Iceland's highland terrain when the path disappears into fog, lava fields, or snow. It doesn't lead you. It orients you.