Board of Directors
As with all members in EuropeanPWN-Amsterdam, the Board of Directors is made up of volunteers who drive the network based on personal inspiration and commitment to the cause of promoting professional women.
President and Strategic Partnerships
Rieke Smakman
A lawyer in The Netherlands, Rieke studied in Utrecht, and began her career with the firm Baker & McKenzie, before opening up her own law firm in Hilversum together with her business partner under the name Oostwaard Advocaten. Her experience includes all phases of preventing and solving domestic and international corporate and commercial disputes. Rieke Smakman is Dutch and mother of two.
Treasurer
Tip Atkins
Tip is the daughter of a Thai mother and Australian father. She was born in Singapore, has also lived in Australia, the United Kingdom and now in The Netherlands. She continues to discover her passions as her life unfolds and is excited to be able to share her learning with the women that wish to work together and who are inspired in the way she chooses to live her life. Tip is a confidence coach who focuses on helping women to connect to their personal power and to find passion in their lives and work. She also enjoys connecting women to others in ways that may help them to grow and to succeed. She experiences a great thrill to help someone to discover their true desires and to see them leave happier than when they first arrived. Tip was elected to the board as Treasurer in 2008.
Board Secretary
Lucia Lloyo
Born and grown up in Mexico she obtained her undergraduate degree in Law. Interest in languages and curiosity for other cultures took Lucia to many countries where she developed a passion for international law. After studying in both Canada & Switzerland, Lucia worked as an intellectual property lawyer. Lucia arrived to Amsterdam to work as the legal director of ETS Global BV. Lucia considers herself an idealist. She joined the board in 2009.
VP Programming
Katharina Pohl
Katharina is currently working for Mexx International, coordinating the expansion of the firm via a franchise partner model. Her passion for the fashion industry plus 7 years of work experience in it led her to the company’s headquarter in Amsterdam. She studied communications management and economics in Germany as well as Canada, which now feels like her second home. Her professional background spans different industries, regions and functions which is very helpful for her cross-functional role at Mexx. She has also worked for McKinsey & Company in consulting, the CineStar Group (Germany’s largest movie theatre chain) in Marketing/PR and Disneyland Paris in Sales. Katharina was elected VP Programming in March 2009.
VP Membership Ad Interim
Caroline van Leuven
Caroline lives near Utrecht, The Netherlands, Europe. She is a certified trainer and executive coach. She provides strategic video analysis to further her client’s personal development. Her roots once in information management (she started her career as a librarian and information specialist at Deloitte in Amsterdam), she pursued also event organization, interim management, and worked as a professional trainer. Since 2006 she runs her latest enterprise, Indivisible. Her consultancy firm targets improving the performance of professionals and organizations based on people’s professional attitude. Beyond emotional experience and performance, she aims to make the intrinsic qualities of employees in organizations self-evident by administering strategic video analysis. Awareness of one’s visual impression and the effect on inter-relations that physical presentation has within the work environment can substantially improve professional perception and image. Caroline enjoys inspiring people to help them grow in their personality and career. She joined the Board Ad Interim June 2009
VP Online Communications
Clara Ko
Clara is an IT Architect at Royal Bank of Scotland with extensive experience working in various sectors such as banking, energy, content management, and embedded software.
She is co-founder of Duchess, an organization connecting women in Java technology, and has spoken on the importance of recruiting more women into technology. She is passionate about using technology to innovate and connect people.
Since becoming VP Online Communications for EuropeanPWN Amsterdam, Clara has built an IT strategy that includes introducing online technology to improve the network’s ability to communicate with its members and sponsors. Her work includes this website and a monthly electronic newsletter. Clara gave the first talk in the Web 2.0 series and wrote an article on women’s role in the future in IT.
VP Social Events
Anna Farrenkopf, Ph.D.
Anna develops potentiostats, galvanostats and surface plasmon resonance instrumentation and works in quality control, testing, and customer support for electrochemistry (batteries, fuel cells, environmental chemistry, corrosion, drug discovery, nano-tech, biosensor, microelectrode, lab on a chip) clientele world-wide. Anna prides herself in troubleshooting: cables, hardware, software, cells, the chemistry, the boss and any other barriers to achieving quality electrochemistry data in your research laboratory. Some of these diagnostic skills are also useful in networking. Member of WIN now EuropeanPWN-Amsterdam since 2002 she became the borrel coördinator in 2005 and was elected to the board as VP Social Events in 2008.
