About me. Throughout my youth I navigated a deeply felt connection to nature and the desire to be in service of making the world a better place with a lack of acknowledgement of my experience. I felt like a guest on planet earth who did not undertsnad the local customs. Economics would help me comprehend my unheimisch gefühl about the ways of the world, so I believed at the age of 16.

As soon as I could I took off to Amsterdam where I graduated in Commerciële Economie (business & marketing) at the Amsterdam University of Applied Science, Business Economics at the Vrije University Amsterdam where I also studied Development Economics.

With an honors degree I took up my dreamed job at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs where I designed and implemeted programmes that delivered equitable economic development, private sector development in and trade promotion for developing countries. I was specifically reponsible for our activities in countries in Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, South-East Asia and the so called ‘Fragile States’. During my career at the Ministry and out of personal interest I enrolled in a professional training of holistic psychotherapy with a specialization in organizational systemic constellations. When those two domains-  macro & societal development and micro & personal development – met within me, the ways of the world started to make sense to me and I found my path.

I have dedicated my career to the interpretation of the phenomena of innovative practices in society, undertaken by humans who seem to reclaim the space of the economy with a deep committment to having it make sense in todays world. Together with Kees Klomp I have collected these phenomena in the container of new economic perspectives as fundamentals for a new economy in our book Thrive – fundamentals for a new economy (2021). 

As an economist I see a firm interuption of patterns of traditional economic thinking, born from the ideas such as post growth, commoning and regeneration. True to the implicate order. Inevitably ushering in an era of new economies that mirror something fundamentally different. Instead of reproducing traditional economic symptoms, we are witnessing the emergence of the uneconomy. I hope to contribute to normalizing this transition, in all its depth.