Jolanda's mission is to make people aware of their own authentic strength. As a trainer, coach and moderator, Jolanda has worked with hundreds of women to make their ambitions visible and find their personal mission. She is the author of the book “From your heart to success”, and is the founder of the Lof Academy, where she helps companies like Accenture, PWC, Post NL, or DNB further develop the potential of their female talent. She is also a change leader at Better Future, a global leadership and strategy consultancy. In 2016 she joined the board of the World Press Photo foundation.

Jolanda has experience as both the board member and the CEO, which allows us to put herself in their shoes and understand both perspectives. She knows how to touch people's hearts and inspire them to take on their personal leadership for a meaningful world, which she tries to do with ScaleUpBoard participants as the program director.

Jan Paul’s career has been focused on digital transformation for over 20 years, in roles that ranged from journalist, to intrapreneur, to senior global executive. His experience in the scientific publishing industry revealed to him the limitations in traditional governance practices, but also the opportunities to improve. So he went on to become an independent coach on innovation and leadership. In 2015 he joined Rockstart as Program Director of “Renew the Book”, an international startup accelerator. He also joined THNK, the School for Creative Leadership, as an enterprise coach, guiding participants on their individual innovation projects.

At ScaleUpNation his focus is on internal investor relations and stakeholder management. His role is to guide participants through the program using a business case, a practical simulation of being in different boards.

Willemijn is the founder and CEO of SwipeGuide, a next-generation platform for instruction software. Prior to founding SwipeGuide, she gained years of experience in consulting (EY, VODW, TOTE-M) and teaching (Beeckestijn Business School). She is also a member of the Forbes Technology Council, an invitation-only community for successful entrepreneurs and executives.

In ScaleUpBoard, Willemijn will share her current challenges as a founder and CEO, and explore with participants how they can provide the most value in each specific case as a board member.

Wouter worked at ABN-AMRO for more than one decade, becoming Senior Vice President responsible for Corporate Brand & Reputation Management. In 2002 he started his own strategy consulting business, Triple Value, where he was a managing partner. He joined the board team of different foundations and companies, including the WakaWaka Foundation and Energietransitiefonds Rotterdam. In 2010 he became a partner at Steward Redqueen, a specialized consultancy focused on impact and sustainability.

Wouter’s expertise lies in sustainability, socially conscious investment, impact assessment, and corporate governance. In the ScaleUpBoard program his focus will be on sustainability in the boardroom. He will facilitate discussions on the topic of sustainability in scale-ups, and how it plays with commercial goals.

Menno van Dijk was a senior partner at McKinsey for over 20 years. He specialized in innovation and growth, working with companies in Europe, South Africa, Australia, and everywhere in between. He created McKinsey’s first software business in a JV with Nielsen. After returning to Amsterdam, Menno co-founded THNK, the School of Creative Leadership. After some years, he was ready for the next big thing: ScaleUpNation. His company came alive with two assumptions in his mind: “Large societal challenges in the world are also large entrepreneurial opportunities. And only the companies that scale can move the needle in terms of impact, value creation and employment”.

Menno’s expertise is in leadership, business strategy and growth. He has deep knowledge of what makes a start-up scale or stall, and can provide you clarity on vision, strategy and priorities.

Anieke holds 20+ years of hands-on experience in innovation and strategy departments across different food & agriculture corporates. She was Innovation Project Leader at Unilever for 10 years, before joining Corbion as Sr. Director Innovation of Food. In 2019 she joined the ScaleUpNation team as director of the ScaleUpFood program. During that time Anieke worked directly with dozens of scaling food&agri ventures in the Netherlands and abroad, witnessing first hand what the best practices for scaling an innovative venture are in the F&A industry. During 2021 she stepped up to the role of CEO at ScaleUpNation.

Anieke is passionate about helping companies articulate and accelerate strategic business development and innovation initiatives. She always says there’s 2 sides to innovation: the one you can see - prototypes, project plans, business cases - and the invisible side. Everything that is related to passion, human interactions and learning. Anieke believes that those aspects are the true enablers for innovation, and in her interventions she strives to bring those aspects out with change management techniques, combined with innovation management tools.

Gijs has started supporting start-ups and scale-ups over 10 years ago, as co-founder and director of Will, a company that supported ventures in preparing for investment rounds (pre-investments) or in growing further (post investment). After Will, Gijs has joined multiple ventures as business developer and investment manager, the common denominator being to support start-ups getting ready for investment and supporting ventures in making it big.

In 2019, Gijs started Gritd: one of the most important partners in the start-up ecosystem to support the government, incubators and early-stage financiers that are committed to accelerating the growth of start-ups. Grits offers unique insights into how start-ups grow and translates these insights into content that guides more scale-ups with data driven tools.

His passion is developing data-driven training and tools, and to support entrepreneurs in realising measurable goals.

Natalia has over 20 years of experience working as a technology consultant, senior investment manager, business support advisor, and, most recently, as a coach to entrepreneurs. She has deep expertise in venture boards, and has researched and published numerous articles on the topic of venture board effectiveness, as well as spoken on the topic internationally. Natalia holds a Doctorate in Corporate Governance of early ventures, and her research is focused on “why startup boards matter and how to get the most value out of them”.

Natalia has currently joined Mercia, an asset management company, as portfolio director. There she supports investee companies with strategic direction, growth optimisation and board oversight.

Dorine Wekking is an experienced board member: from the Haagsche School, to HEMA, to the Aon Groep, she has been part of numerous supervisory and executive boards. Dorine has a long track record as a HR professional in multiple international industries and in the public domain, where she has gained valuable insights of the dynamics of organizations, their boards and critical stakeholders. Among other positions she was Senior Manager HR Strategy at Deloitte, HR Director at KPN, and Director HR at Aon. She is now a member of the external audit committee at the Ministry of Finance of the Netherlands.

Dorine’s purpose, in her words, is to “support leaders and teams in their journey to create and ground humane and sustainable organizations”.