Cases -

In the bigger part of my experience of the last six years I have been responsible for individuals, teams and a complete office where the main focus was to grow the business and to optimize the client relationship.As a Business Development Manager and Sales Director I have learned to really understand our clients and also developed the expertise to recognize the major (upcoming) market trends and business opportunities. We all understand how important this part of a commercial business is, but the challenging part was to be able to aline a group of individuals and different teams to work as efficient and effective as possible. In the end, it was “the man on the ground” that made it all happen.

Based on listening to our clients needs and the idea’s of our projectmanagers and sales-teams, implementing a strong KPI (Key Performance Indicators) driven business culture and steer on ownership, I developed a successful sales- & business operation and was I a key player in the profitable growth of the Amsterdam office.

People aren’t your greatest asset, it is how you empower your people.

In my time as a manager and most of all during my time of being the Managing Director of 35-40 people, I truly learned to understand the value of assembling a group of talent and empower them to strive and work for the organization’s objectives.

As a management of the Amsterdam office we where able to attract young talented people by an effective HR-policy and structure. With that I restructured our training and development programs and implemented a system with more eye for the individual needs of the employee. This way, we achieved a more stable (retention) group of talent, we where able to develop our talent better and forged a winning culture where ownership, energy and celebrating succes where key factors.

Being able to build a loyal team of 35-40 people, where production, design, finance, sales and IT all strive for the growth of the business and get a groups commitment towards the company’s vision is a good start of a company’s success.

When I started within the Mediaplanet group six years ago, we where still a 100% print oriented media company. During my rise within the Amsterdam office we implemented a new online video product, launched a digital product and merged three single departments (print, video and digital) into a one-stop-shop service of cross-media platforms. In this process I was a key part of managing through the growing pains of a new digital focused strategy. Where now more than 20% of the total revenue is digital oriented.

Agro-Food (with Jamie Oliver and large sponsors as Vion Food and Agrifirm)
Mijn-Pensioen (with De Nederlandsche Bank as a partner and with Achmea and EY as investors)
Sport-Marketing (with Joost Luijten and the sponsors of the 12th Edition of the Volvo Ocean race)

Being able to compete, as an individual but also in a team has been and still is a major part of my life. As a 10 year old talented baseball player I was part of the Dutch National baseball team which after more than 12 years won the European Championship. In my career (20+ years) I was fortunate to represent several different Dutch National teams and also played as a (semi)professional in Australia, Perth.

As part of my baseball routine I got familiar with strength and conditioning training. This later developed into a fascination for fitness and became passionately interested in issues of health, lifestyle and nutrition. I learned that my winning mentality which I established as a sports fanatic (next to the baseball and fitness I am also active as a golfer and surfer) became really valuable as a Manager and team member in a business environment.