René van der Meijden

COO · Chief Transformation Officer · GBS & Shared Services | PE-backed · Post-acquisition · Scale-up | Building what matters, then moving on

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

About

I build things that work, and I fix things that don't. For over 25 years across GE, Randstad and COFRA I have worked the situations most operators step around: multi-country restructurings, GBS organisations built from a blank sheet, post-acquisition integration, cost programmes with the clock running. Real mandate, high stakes, no time to waste. The work, in numbers: - COFRA: built a global shared services function across four countries from zero. 90 people, €22M budget. Quality up 35%, cost down 25%, engagement from 6.9 to 7.8. - Randstad: led GBS strategy across all countries. 5% operational productivity gain, plus RPA and automation delivering consistent annual savings. - GE: restructured EMEA cash management from 17 locations to six. €1.8M saved, NPS up 50%. What I actually do: go to where the work happens, get into the numbers and the process, and make the calls that move cost, cash, service quality and governance in the right direction. I bring the strategic picture and the operational detail to execute it, and I am direct enough to say the uncomfortable thing when it needs saying. I am drawn to the hard cases: PE-backed companies under a profitability mandate, businesses mid-acquisition, scale-ups hitting their first real operational complexity. The brief I want is the one where something is genuinely broken and someone needs it fixed, properly, with the team still standing at the end. I am not building a career at this stage. I want a challenge worth committing to, something real to deliver, and an organisation left measurably better than I found it. On the side I built Empty Book Club: an AI-native business I designed and ran from scratch, largely solo. It keeps me on the frontier of what AI actually does inside an operation, in practice rather than in theory. I bring that into every business I touch. If you are carrying a transformation mandate that needs someone who has done it before, let's talk.

Experience

  • Founder at Empty Book Club
    Jan 2026 - Present · 6 mos

    AI literacy and business experiment. Exploring how practical AI adoption changes the way individuals and organisations work and how this novel idea could bring value to any organziation. Running alongside my executive career as a learning accelerator and emerging business.

  • Co-Founder at R2 Hospitality Group
    Jun 2024 - Present · 2 yrs 1 mo

    Operations and back-office advisory. Helping hospitality organisations design and implement shared services, process improvement, and AI-enabled operations

  • Managing Director COFRA Services at COFRA Holding AG
    Nov 2020 - Apr 2026 · 5 yrs 6 mos

    Mandate completed: GBS build, downsized, streamlined, automated and partially outsourced (offshore)

  • Randstad (Amsterdam Area, Netherlands)
    • Executive VP GBS Strategy
      Jan 2015 - Oct 2020 · 5 yrs 10 mos

      Initiate, own, drive and execute on the Global Business Services strategy

    • Director Operations Randstad SSC
      Oct 2011 - Dec 2014 · 3 yrs 3 mos

      Responsible for the operations of the Dutch Shared Services function of Randstad, Tempo Team and Yacht

  • Managing Partner at Dispatch United
    Sep 2010 - Nov 2014 · 4 yrs 3 mos

    Initiator of the Dispatch United taxi app service.