Greater Stockholm Metropolitan Area
Strategic leader with over 10 years of experience in humanitarian shelter and technical project management. Acting as a key partner to humanitarian organizations throughout the full project lifecycle — from proposal development and onboarding to implementation, training, and long-term support. Drive partner satisfaction and long-term engagement by providing technical and programmatic guidance, delivering tailored trainings, and continuously improving product demonstrations and support materials. Work cross-functionally with product, marketing, supply chain, and partnership teams to ensure effective implementation and high-impact project delivery. Serve as a strong partner advocate, translating field needs into actionable insights for product development and service innovation. Experienced in stakeholder engagement at all levels, product testing, service development, and continuous improvement to maximize value and impact in complex humanitarian contexts.
Better Shelter, a humanitarian non-profit founded in a collaboration between IKEA Foundation and UNHCR, has since 2015 delivered over 95.000 shelter to emergency, crisis and development programs in over 80 countries for people affected by conflict or disaster. Involved from 2012, I have transformed design ideas into real products that provide safety, dignity and a feeling of home to the users and withstand heavy use and extreme climates, and have helped to develop the organisation. As the Head of Technology of Better Shelter I have the overall responsible for the technical performance of Better Shelter products with a strong focus on sustainability, cost, production without loosing an eye on the user, funder and implementing organisation. Responsibilities included: - Setting the overall technical performance of Better Shelter products and product parts - Management of quality assurance and control of parts - System test management for wind, rain, snow, fire, impact and thermal performance - Production relocations and production improvements - Partnership development and fundraising - Technical support to partners such as UNHCR, IOM, MSB etc. - Remote and on-site training of partners - Product development, product improvements, and development of training materials - Project planning, management, budgeting and budget management
As technical project leader I had the responsibility to translate design concepts into well performing parts and products by setting performance requirements and confirmation by tests. - Setting requirements to parts and product - Making part and product improvements - Performing lab and field test e.g. fire, wind, rain, tensile/tear strength, durability etc. - Customer and supplier contact
Consultancy in the field of building physics, structural engineering, testing and building / product design for SMEs and private parties. Product development and innovation for SMEs and the humanitarian sector.
As project manager / researcher I was responsible for acquisition, budgeting, guiding, executing and reporting of various researches (R&D) for the (building) industry (SMEs) on building -technology,- installations and in the physics area. Amongst many others, I designed, built and guided large scale tests for the Dutch and German railway industry on switch blade heating and switch motors under winter conditions. Since my start at the TU/e I was involved in the development of shelters, sheltering items and energy systems for NGOs for example the Dutch Red Cross, IFRC-Shelter Research Unit, MSF, NRC and UNHCR. One of the tangible results is the realisation of a large scale collective centre, a jointly development together with the Dutch Red Cross. From early 2012 we also supported Refugee Housing Unit with the development of a temporary family shelter on prototype part/product testing, product development, (building) legislation, building physics and implementation of prototypes. During my employment at the TU/e I guided many Dutch and Asian MSc graduating students, fellow researchers and lab staff with their research and assessing and evaluating of output and jointly wrote multiple Dutch and EU grant proposals.
Foundation De Groene Zwaan owns and exploits a former Lutheran church and side buildings as a cultural center and organizes e.g. life music, movie theater, parties, walking dinners and lectures for a wide audience. As board members we were responsible for financial well being, fundraising, collaborations, renovating and global management.
Designing and engineering of newly build houses and extensions, calculating and making presentation and 3D models