What keeps me busy
Supervisory board of the WWF (Wereld Natuur Fonds)
2018 - present, As member of the Supervisory Board of the WWF I support this exceptional organisation by giving advice about digital strategy, marketing, engagement and IT. Nature is the biggest miracle on earth. The mission of WWF is to build a world in which humans and nature can live together in harmony. Be one with nature.
Supervisory board of the BrandMeestergroep
2020 - present, BrandMR offers legal support for a fixed price so that people who don't have legal insurance can still get advice and representation for a reasonable fare. As a member of the Supervisory Board of BrandMR, I support this beautiful organisation with advice, specifically in the field of digital strategy, marketing and IT.
Coach, author and interim manager
2005 - present, At Wehkamp, Jumbo, Coolblue, but also in my work at KPN and TomTom I have learned a lot about changing and scaling organisations, about server-side and embedded software, quality assurance, DevOps, distributed teams and (Cloud)infrastructure. Now, I use my experience to help companies and individual people to improve and grow. I love to share my knowledge, to help and to coach. Please take a look a the coachings section of this website if you’re interested to know more.
Advisory board of JEX Works
2022 - 2023, JEX is a software organisation that offers smart products and services for the temporary employee sector. JEX is a one-stop-shop which develops the best solutions to connect supply and demand on the flexible workforce market. As a member of the Advisory Board of JEX I help creating the long-term vision for the company with extra focus on the product and development team.
CTO Wehkamp
2021 - 2023, Wehkamp is an e-commerce company in the Netherlands with a broad assortment of goods such as clothing, furniture and electronics. My job at Wehkamp was to lead the Technology team. This team needed to innovate fast because of the growing and changing market Wehkamp operates in with increasingly more and stronger competitors from all over the world. My team was growing and learning to be better every day, with a shared passion for e-commerce and technology.
Head of Jumbo Tech Campus
2017 - 2020, In 2017 me and my team founded the Jumbo Tech Campus (JTC). This software development department builds all software for Jumbo, and does so mainly in-house. Jumbo is the second largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands. It had the ambition to become more technology-oriented. In JTC’s first 3 years we implemented Agile, and grew from an IT-team that consisted mainly of external workers to a predominantly internal team. We brought Belgium live for Jumbo, transitioned our online environment to the cloud, hugely expanded our online sales, kept our systems running stable through the huge load triggered by the Corona-crisis of 2020, and renewed all supermarkets’ POS (point of sales) systems. Furthermore, we organised 2 successful hackathons where an enormous amount of new tech-ideas sprouted and which were loads of fun to do.
Head of Software Development at Coolblue
2013 - 2017, At Coolblue, one of the largest online retailers of the Benelux and the fastest growing company in this industry, I was responsible for software development. 28 Scrum teams worked on building, expanding and improving the e-commerce platform, the back office systems, and the infrastructure needed to run these platforms and the workplaces. Furthermore, since Coolblue puts great value on data analysis, there were many teams working on Business Intelligence. In four years’ time, we successfully grew from 5 to 28 scrum teams, implemented continuous deployment, migrated the whole of the Coolblue webshop to the cloud and much more.
EVP Software Engineering at CCS
2011 - 2013, In 2011 I worked for the company CCS as a member of the board. I was responsible for software engineering in the Netherlands and India. We built Level 7, a software product for the Insurance Industry.
VP Software Engineering
2007 - 2011, In 2007 I joined TomTom Navigation Systems as VP Software Engineering. Back then, TomTom’s growth was accelerating rapidly, and so was my team. Our biggest challenge was meeting the deadlines for delivering the embedded software. I can proudly say that we succeeded in that, and in 2009 we delivered all 10 of our software projects in time without any quality issues. My team at TomTom consisted of 20 different nationalities, most of them based in Amsterdam, as well as Taiwan, China and India.
Management Trainee and IT Manager at KPN
1997 - 2007, After receiving my MSc degree at Delft University of Technology, I began working for Royal Dutch Telecommunications (KPN). After a period as management-trainee I was given the opportunity to become an IT manager and manage over 250 teams. In 2005 I led my first outsourced software team in India.
Member of the city council of Delft for STIP
1993 - 1996. STIP, short for Technical Students in Politics (Studenten Techniek In Politiek), is a Delft city council-party founded in 1993. Its mission is to represent Delft students in local politics. Delft is a city with a large student population. Our initiative proved to be successful: after a period of campaigning we were elected to the city council of Delft. I was the second member of the council for STIP in 1994 and 1995. It turned out to be the start of a successful political party that to this day is a force to be reckoned with in the Delft city council.
Student at the Technical University of Delft
1990 - 1997, Industrial Design Engineering.Some projects I was involved with:
- Design project at AG Autogas-Systems, January 1994 - October 1994.
Assignment: New gas fuel system. - Internship at Philips Media Systems in Eindhoven, February 1995 - May 1995.
Assignment: The World Wide Web. What is it and what can Philips Media do with it? - Graduation at KPN Research, July 1996 - February 1997.
Assignment: Design an interface for interactive television.
