The Randstad, Netherlands
I build communities that matter to both the business and the community. I've built community functions from zero multiple times: in the early 2000s with Mambo/Joomla!, as founder of Dutchento/Meet Magento (scaling to 600+ annual attendees), as creator of CRO.CAFE (200+ episodes across four languages), and at Spryker where I built (the team that served) the enterprise community serving 130+ clients and partners. My psychology background helps me understand why developers and technical users behave the way they do, so I design interventions that actually move the needle. What I bring: → Community Strategy: I translate community intelligence into product roadmaps, reduce support costs through peer-to-peer learning, and create competitive moats built on trust rather than lock-in. → Developer Relations: I understand what technical ecosystems need and orchestrate internal change to deliver it. At Spryker, community-driven initiatives influenced 25% of product decisions. → Cross-Functional Leadership: I operate at the intersection of community, product, and customer success. Reporting to C-suite and translating between technical users and business stakeholders. → Trust-Based Team Building: I give autonomy within alignment. Teams I build operate independently and outgrow their roles. Current focus: → Pragmatic AI adoption for community operations and business automation → Building vendor-independent systems that reduce lock-in and increase resilience → Open source ecosystems over proprietary dependencies Track record: - Community Builder Award from eBay CEO John Donahoe - Experimentation Culture Award - 200+ speaking engagements across 26 countries Currently exploring leadership opportunities in community, DevRel, AI and ecosystem roles.
Drove company-wide transformation through voice-of-the-customer/community and antifragile system design, influencing strategic direction beyond community. Strategic Leadership: → Organizational Transformation: Transformed community insights into business strategy across Product, Engineering, and Customer Success; → Cross-Functional Influence: Embedded insights into C-suite decision-making, directly advising CCO on ecosystem strategies; → Scaled Impact: Accelerated growth to 40% YoY while maintaining team efficiency through smart automation (n8n workflows); → Innovation Catalyst: Pioneered internal AI adoption (incl. n8n) and expanded MIT ecosystem adoption, creating vendor-independent innovation layer for enterprise clients; → Trust Building: Created rituals and traditions that strengthened community bonds beyond technical touchpoints → Global Thought Leadership: Presented at conferences on Composable commerce, B2B growth strategies and automation/innovation. Business Results: → Community-driven initiatives influenced 25% of product roadmap decisions → Reduced platform costs 70% while improving resilience through open architecture
Rebuilt the foundation of Spryker's community strategy from zero, establishing programs and processes that would scale to serve all our 130+ enterprise clients and developer ecosystem. Foundation Building: → Team Creation: Recruited and developed initial community team, establishing culture of trust and innovation; → Member Success Focus: Designed onboarding that turns newcomers into contributors, focusing on individual member growth alongside company metrics → Platform Innovation: Led migration from Slack to forum-based platform, improving data sovereignty and community ownership; → Customer Advisory Board: Launched and facilitated CAB to create direct feedback loops between enterprise clients and product roadmap; → Community Model Design: Implemented Orbit/SPACES framework for scalable, low-touch/high-impact community engagement; → Developer Ecosystem: Initiated MIT-licensed module ecosystem to encourage open innovation. Initial Impact: → Achieved 30% community growth in first year through targeted initiatives → Represented Spryker at 50+ global events, establishing thought leadership presence → Built community platform serving 130+ enterprise accounts with 3-person team
Weekly podcast where I interviewed people working on conversion optimization from agencies, client-side or tool vendors, with a total of over 200 episodes. 🏆 In September 2020 I received the "Experimentation Culture Award" for my work on the podcast. Besides English, the podcast spun off into a Dutch, Spanish and German version (hosted by other CRO specialists), driving global audience engagement and thought leadership in CRO/experimentation topics.
→ Strategic Optimization: Owned customer experience strategy for 16 global e-commerce properties (L'OR, Tassimo brands) → Data-Driven Culture: Expanded experimentation program and drove adoption of evidence-based decision making across teams → Behavioral Psychology Application: Applied cognitive insights to improve user journeys and conversion paths
I founded the local Dutch community for the Magento e-commerce platform and have organized many events throughout the years, including 11 editions of Meet Magento, scaling to 600+ annual attendees. 🏆 For my work I received the Community Builder Award from eBay CEO John Donahoe. And lots of love from the community of course 😄.
I improved Vaimo clients’ digital channels and better matched these with their customer behavior/needs by arranging and executing user research, data analysis and experimentation services as part of Vaimo's continuous growth plans. I evaluated clients’ digital maturity and capabilities for growth and build several Customer Experience Reports. With my experience and practical insights, I’m able to recommend what, why and how to set the strategy for a fast-track to success. And of course help the clients actually implement the plans and adjust align the way where needed. Besides that I hosted Vaimo’s international Core of Commerce podcast and regularly represented Vaimo at public workshops and conferences to share my experience. Some of the clients I worked with: ✭ Lecot ✭ Bahne ✭ Bauhaus ✭ Diptyque ✭ Favorite Gifts ✭ Helly Hansen ✭ Heineken ✭ Canal Digital.