Speakers
Andrea Martins, director and co-founder of ExpatWomen.com, comprehensive, global website dedicated to helping women living overseas. ExpatWomen.com’s mission is to inspire your success abroad by providing you with a first-stop website to share stories, network globally, develop personally and find the best resources.
Since young Antoinette van Alphen has been interested why people act as they do, what motivates and inspires them. Why some are unhappy and others very successful. From her studies in psychology to her travels around the world and her studies of various cultures, Antoinette developed programmes for international organisations as an Outdoor Management trainer. With much enthusiasm she teaches managers understanding, respect, appreciation and skills to cooperate with cultures all over the world. She has since taken over the Management Training Centre Outward Bound and changed the name to
MTC Outdoor Europe. Besides training programmes as Teambuilding, Cultural change and Leadership she develops new concepts and programmes like Energy Management and Professional Intuition. Since 15 years Antoinette follows and organizes training programmes in the field of intuition, reading and healing. These spiritual trainings, studies and experiences do finally offer satisfying answers.
Catherine Gray is the founder of the Amsterdam-based internet marketing firm
Coppervine BV. She advises on internet marketing in telecoms, finance and other sectors in eastern and western Europe and North America. Coppervine's approach centers around clear communication based on an understanding of your audience's perspective. Before founding Coppervine, Catherine came to Amsterdam to expand e-learning software firm
Blackboard's professional services into Europe. Her background combines marketing, software development, communications, and graphic design. She holds the M.S. and B.S. degrees in Computer Science from
M.I.T. Active in the Amsterdam business community, she has served on the Board of Directors of the
Amsterdam American Business Club.
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.
Known as a "Living through art specialist," Daniella Rubinovitz has a particular vision for meaning behind artwork. Daniella delivers high‐impact, low‐cost, customized insight for turbo‐charging individuals with a creative tool for channeling life clarity. After 10 years of working in the corporate world designing high tech products, she got back in contact with her early passion for fine art. Inspired to deepen her knowledge of the psychological effects of colors, lines and shapes, Daniella obtained her degree as an art therapist. Specialized in experiencing art as a creative tool for clarity: fun is assured. Daniella runs Atelier Werkplaats Molenpad in Amsterdam.
In 1985 she started her career as a human resources consultant in Bangkok, Thailand. Upon her return to the Netherlands (1995) she initially worked as a trainer/consultant with a focus on appraisal systems (Breda). Later she joined an international headhunter in Amsterdam. In January 1999 she started her own agency in Amsterdam. Her services focus on diversity and crosscultural management. She applies different systems to make individuals aware of their preferred styles of behaviour and patterns in decision making, against the backdrop of organizational goals and team dynamics. Since January 2003 she operates from Zwolle.
Eleonore Breukel is Managing Director of Intercultural Communication BV, an intercultural training and coaching firm. She assists global organizations and their people to develop cultural intelligence and enhance professional effectiveness in working in an international environment with multicultural clients and colleagues. Eleonore frequently speaks at conferences and gives guest lectures. She published over a 100 culture related articles, authored a book on ‘How to do business in 19 countries’ and coauthored The Cultural Detective The Netherlands, an intercultural training tool used by leading global organizations.
Fons Trompenaars studied Economics at the Free University of Amsterdam and later earned a Ph.D. from Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, with a dissertation on differences in conceptions of organizational structure in various cultures. He experienced cultural differences firsthand at home, where he grew up speaking both French and Dutch, and then later at work with Shell in nine countries.
Fons joined Shell in 1981 and moved into the Personnel Division for Shell in Rotterdam. From 1985, he worked in job classification and management development at the Shell Research Laboratories in Amsterdam. In 1989 he founded the Centre for International Business Studies, a consulting and training organization for international management. Since 1998 he operates as Trompenaars Hampden-Turner.
Fons Trompenaars has worked as a consultant for Shell, BP, ICI, Philips, Heineken, TRW, Mars, Motorola, General Motors, Nike, Cable and Wireless, CSM and Merrill Lynch.
He is an award winning, best selling author, and trainer.
Gerdie van den Bergh is a communication trainer and bodymind/voice coach. She developed her communication skills in both her work as a policewoman in Rotterdam and parallel as a body worker in her own practice. She worked 20 years as the only woman in a male team and learned in this period how to handle gender communication. Her passion is to connect people and teach them to bridge differences.
Helma has a degree in law made an impressive career in the technology industry. Currently, she is Head of the department of sustainable energy at
Essent, one of the largest players on the Dutch energy market, and will speak about the obstacles that women, in particular those with a scientific background, have to overcome when deciding on a career in the technology sector.
Hollis co-founded Auberon, growth strategy consultants in February 2001, where she served as Managing Director until closing the business at the end of 2008 to make room for other passions in business-, creative- and not-for-profit- areas.
Hollis has significant international experience in a wide variety of sectors, primarily consumer goods- and technology- related businesses, helping multinational clients with a full range of strategic growth challenges, innovation and implementation. She spent six years as a member of the McKinsey Alumni Board/ Max Geldens Foundation for Societal Renewal Board and served on the Philips DAP Innovation Board during its start-up year.
Jackie Cuthbert is the Vice President Global Recruitment & Learning at Royal DSM N.V. She started her career in her homeland UK where she held various senior HR positions in Retail, Merchant Banking and the ICT industry (Sainsbury’s, Credit Suisse and Unisys). Having worked amongst others in the US and Germany, Jackie moved to the Netherlands when she joined DSM in 2002. Jackie’s career focus has primarily been on establishing best practice performance management programs to develop and retain highly skilled resources within international businesses. Her current responsibilities also include Diversity and Change Management in DSM.
Jo Parfitt, author of 26 books, publisher, journalist and editor. Since 2002 she has helped more than 50 budding authors get into print. Some of them made it to Amazon bestseller status. To find out more about Jo go to www.joparfitt.com and pick up her free report '50 Steps to a Book in Your Hand.'
Jo Parfitt, Writer, Teacher, Speaker and Writers' Mentor shares what she knows to help others to grow. Looking for inspiration? Sign up to her Inspirer newsletter, read her blog and catch her on Twitter
skype: summertimejo
Twitter: www.twitter.com/JoParfitt
Blog: http://expatrollercoaster.wordpress.com
Jolanda Prijs is director at
FranklinCovey, Netherlands, a global company on leadership and organizational development. Based on the leadership philosophy of Stephen Covey, FranklinCovey has developed a portfolio of services on leadership. Well known is his international bestseller “The 7 habits of Highly Effective people” that sold over 15 million copies worldwide.
Jolanda started her career after law school as a tax inspector and manager. Soon she discovered that working with people and organizations was her true passion. Therefore, Jolanda decided to make a remarkable career shift and joined FranklinCovey in 2002, where she is now the managing partner and is also working with several clients herself.
Julie Gilbert founded the
WOLF program while she was Senior Vice President at
Best Buy. Through her leadership in WOLF, Best Buy increased female market share by more than $3.6 billion, increased the number of female job applicants by 37 percent, and reduced female employee turnover by 5.7 percent. Recently, she turned her attention to spreading the WOLF idea throughout the U.S and Europe with another initiative called
www.wolfmeansbusiness.com. She will continue to try to build a global network of women reinventing business and growing leaders. Events and upcoming keynote speeches will be posted on
the WOLF group on Facebook.
Michelle is founding partner of Jupiter Consulting Group and has been able to apply her considerable blue-chip experience, gained in a wide variety of human resource roles, to make a real impact on the people side of her clients’ businesses. She has worked as an internal and external organizational consultant, trainer and manager. Michelle focuses on employee relationship management and is passionate about engaging employees through her innovative approach. Her strengths lie in listening to her intuition (which is usually right on target!), being able to simplify complex issues, working collaboratively and bringing creative, fun and pragmatic solutions to the table.
Mieke Damen, currently Vice President Operations at
Mexx Europe, started her impressive career at
Nike in 1980 when she joined the company at its very early start in Europe. She quickly developed with the company and held different positions in sales and operations, both in Holland and in the US. When Mieke received the offer to work for Mexx in 1985, the company was still in its baby shoes which gave her the amazing opportunity to work with the original founders and grow with the company. Over the years Mieke assumed a wide variety of functions in areas like sales, customer service, procurement and logistics.
In 2006 she was promoted to the board of Mexx Europe Holding as Vice President Operations and is currently responsible for all administrative and physical flows of orders and Mexx products.
In addition to her demanding job, Mieke has two passions: improving the world of logistics via innovation and creating more diversity in the world of logistics as well as at board levels by helping women in their professional development. These two passions are reflected in many of her side activities in advisory boards, networks and as a member of the Commissie van Laarhoven.
Nancy McKinstry, appointed CEO of Wolters Kluwer in 2003, engineered a successful transformation of Wolters Kluwer into a forward-looking, customer-focused organization for professionals in the areas of legal, business, tax, accounting, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and healthcare. She is leading the organization as it carries out its 2010-2012 strategy for Maximizing Value for Customers. She has been included in leading lists as one of the most powerful women in business, including Forbes’ 100 Most Powerful Women, Fortune's Global 50 Powerful Women in Business, and Financial Times Top 50 Women in World Business.
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Raised in Paris, Nicky has been living in and out of France for the past 15 years, has never (ever!) shopped outside her hometown, or given up on her French eating habits. Like most Parisians, she knows the capital’s shops, current styles and future trends. On weekdays Nicky is an INSEAD MBA graduate and internet entrepreneur, currently launching wondersale.nl, a promotions and discounts webshop that activates on key calendar dates such as Sinterklaas, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.
Paul Meerts’ background is political science and international law and he has much experience in dealing with political and international negotiations. What drives his passion and success in international negotiations is a deep empathy for human relationships and intercultural differences. For many years he has been affiliated with the Institute Clingendael in The Hague. As co-founder of Clingendael he has been Director of the Department of Training and Education and Deputy Director of the Institute. Next to that Paul is visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, the University of Economics in Prague, and the UNESCO Institute for Water Education in Delft. Paul’s research focuses on the evolution of diplomatic negotiation, the synergy between warfare and negotiations as well as on the impact of external actors on internal processes.
Currently, he trains diplomats, civil servants, military officers and university students in theory and practice of the international negotiation process. Paul Meerts is specialized in interstate negotiations, political analysis and currently works mainly South Caucasus and Central Asia.
A selection of Paul’s articles can be found under: http://www.clingendael.nl/staff/?id=46
Paula, an Australian businesswoman, set up O'Connell Marketing after moving to work in the Netherlands with an international company, and then falling in love with the place and the people.
Setting up her own business has allowed Paula to fulfill her passion for both marketing and recruitment.
"I worked in product marketing before moving into the recruitment industry more than 10 years ago" says Paula. "Having that history in marketing myself has been the ideal background for specialising in recruitment of marketing professionals."
Peter is a golf-pro since 1966. He has twice been recognized as the reigning Dutch National Golf Champion and has played on the European Tour Circuit. Since 1984, Peter is also a professional golfing instructor.
Marketing Director Central Europe and Emerging Markets at
Adobe Systems and has successfully dealt with a wide array of critical situation during her impressive career in the IT sector. Regina has more than 20 years of marketing experience and held various marketing management positions at IT companies like
Avid Technology and
Siebel Systems in which she gathered a broad experience within Field- as well as Corporate Marketing. In addition to that she developed new markets in Russia and Eastern Europe.
Reini van Leeuwen acquired a degree from Delft University of Technology and then started her career as a naval architect for – at that time – the largest Dutch ship building company. Having received her law degree from Leiden University she then joined Shell as a patent attorney trainee. With a qualification as a Dutch and European patent attorney she first worked in the patent team of Shell’s Intellectual Property Services team where she dealt with all aspects of patent generation, prosecution, maintenance as well as opposition procedures. Currently, Mrs. van Leeuwen is managing counsel Intellectual Property for the Shell Group.
Richard Kwakernaak is the founder Institute for Communication Psychology and Transformation (ICPT). He graduated from Naval Academy with a specialization in Human Resources Management and founded the Institute for Communication Psychology and Transformation (ICPT) after fourteen years in active service of the Royal Netherlands Navy. During that time Richard acquired a vast amount of experience of communication in male dominated environments which he now also passes on in his work with various national and international companies and a number of seminars that he teaches for the military, especially at NATO’s Civil-Military Cooperation Centre of Excellence.
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.
Sagar Simon has been practicing the work of Byron Katie since 1999.
He has a Masters Degree in counseling and has also trained as a Gestalt Therapist, and a Hypnotherapist.
He loves to join others on their journey to find inner peace, and to find space from stressful thoughts. He knows what its like to feel rejected and lost and to come out on the other side. His focus is to work with people intensely, on a short-term basis. He specializes in working with all kinds of relationships and mediation within small businesses. He would like to join you in finding your way back to a kinder, peaceful and respectful place within you.
Shannon Jones is Marketing and Category Director for Starbucks Coffee Company Europe, Middle East & Africa. She has been with Starbucks for over 10 years in various marketing roles in the U.S. and international. For the past 4 years she has lead marketing and product in the EMEA region from their EMEA headquarters and roasting plant in Amsterdam.
An American living in the Netherlands since 1999, moved here to be with her Dutch love (they are still together and happy). She started her own business in 2002 after years in the corporate world. Stephanie adores meeting people from all over the world and learning new things. She is passionate about helping Business Owners attract more clients and grow their businesses! If you'd like to attract more clients, be sure to grab your FREE copy of the special report: '7 STEPS TO ATTRACT MORE CLIENTS IN LESS TIME' plus a bonus of free monthly Business Building Tips at:
http://www.fireflycoaching.com. Interested in success tips for life? Then check out her blog:
http://successtipsforlife.typepad.com
Founder & CEO Goldswolf, a former Olympic swimmer, Susan has more than twenty years experience in large multinationals, having worked at senior management levels for Japanese (
Hitachi), American (
American Digital) and European (
Tetra Pak) corporations across a range of industry areas. Her most recent corporate role was as Vice President, Communications, Tetra Pak International before she founded Goldswolf, a company specialized in change management, leadership communications and executive coaching. Since 2004, Susan has also been an executive coach at
IMD Business School, Switzerland.
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Ursula is co-founder and director of Intercultural Business Improvement Ltd. (www.ibinet.nl; www.irc-center.com), a consultancy and training firm specialized in intercultural management development.
Ursula has been delivering courses and presentations for a number of public and private organizations. One of her recent assignments consisted of workshops on Managing Dutch-German cultural differences for the integration teams involved in a major cross-border acquisition. In 2007/2008 she was responsible for an integration program for a European corporation; the program combined training, individual assessment, coaching as well as networking events for 180 managers.
Together with Oscar van Weerdenburg, Ursula developed the Intercultural Readiness Check (IRC), a questionnaire assessing four key intercultural competences. The IRC has been widely recognized in the academic and business communities, and its database by now is one of the largest sources of information on intercultural competences world-wide.
Vanessa Borchers has 18 years of experience with
Deloitte,
serving a variety of clients and industries. During this time she
has also successfully focused on a number of strategic talent
initiatives. Vanessa is currently an Enterprise Risk Services
partner in the Dutch practice and was appointed Talent Partner
in 2008.
Petra Rudolf is a Professor of Experimental Solid State Physics of the University of Groningen.
