I help brands become more human
Speaker, author and entrepreneur. I help organisations use technology to become more human, not less. This is the long version.
Me, an actual human being.
A talkative kid from Delft
I was born in 1987 in Delft, the Netherlands, into a home with a hardworking father and a stay-at-home mom. There was always someone around, always conversation in the house, always movement and energy.
I was a cheerful kid who started talking early. My grandmother used to laugh and say, "He started talking once… and never stopped." That line would follow me for the rest of my life.
At home, I was curious, talkative, and creative, but at school I was a different kid. Introverted, a little insecure, and mostly average. The place where I felt most at ease was behind a computer screen. At ten years old, I built my first website, entirely about music.
"He started talking once… and never stopped"
Music, microphones, and the first taste of an audience
High school was where something fundamental changed. I didn't just discover music, I discovered making music. I started writing lyrics, recording them over beats, and teaching myself how to mix and master tracks.
What started as a hobby quickly grew more serious. I joined a group of semi-known artists, performed in small venues, entered competitions, and even made it to the final sixteen of the Junior Eurovision auditions in Amsterdam. One of my demos was played on national radio.
At the time, I thought I was chasing music. I was actually learning how to hold a room.
Mid-keynote, somewhere in 2025.
Quitting the corporate lane
After studying development, and realising I didn't enjoy it, a teacher pulled me aside: "You should probably do something in marketing. Something where you can talk." It sounded like a throwaway comment. It wasn't.
I switched to marketing, where I discovered my strengths. After graduating, I chose work over more studies and started as an account manager in IT sales. During the day, I sold technology. At night, I invested in myself, studying Business English at Cambridge, exploring social psychology, and specialising in change management and innovation.
By 2016, corporate life felt restrictive and creatively suffocating. I quit my job and started my own business as a growth hacker, with no backup plan and no safety net. Just a belief that I would figure it out along the way.
"If every company followed that path, the future would be filled with identical organisations delivering the same soulless experiences"
A lunch with Jonathan that changed everything
In 2017, I was having lunch with my best friend Jonathan. We were both working as growth hackers, and during that conversation something clicked. We realised that much of what we were doing felt off. Endless experiments on consumers, all for marginal revenue gains. Technology used to manipulate people instead of helping them.
That day, we coined the term Brand Humanizing. We spent a full year researching the concept while I freelanced to pay the bills. It pulled together everything I was into: technology, psychology and human behaviour.
There was just one problem. I had zero experience with a business audience. Public speaking was never part of the plan. Still, I realised this idea would never spread if I kept it to myself. So I reached out to a college and offered to share my story with a small group of students. To my surprise, it worked.
The book, finally on a shelf.
Forty stages a year, and one big mission
One day, someone found me on LinkedIn and asked me to speak at a small corporate event. The talk went well, and I used that momentum to apply to a speakers agency. From there things moved quickly. Speaking across the country, then internationally, working with major organisations from fast-growing companies to global corporates.
Looking back, it all connects. The talkative kid at home. The introverted student at school. The teenager writing lyrics. The marketer fascinated by human behaviour. Every phase was preparing me for the same thing: standing on a stage and helping organisations find a better balance between people and technology.
My life goal is to build Brand Humanizing into a global movement that reshapes how work is designed and how technology is used. And to use that success to one day buy UD Las Palmas and bring the club to its first-ever European glory.
Key milestones
- 1987Born in Delft, the Netherlands
- 1997Built my first website at age 10
- 2002Made it to the final 16 of the Junior Eurovision auditions
- 2009Started my career in IT sales
- 2016Quit corporate life to become a full-time entrepreneur
- 2017Coined Brand Humanizing
- 2019Founded the Brand Humanizing Institute
- 2020Won the Dutch Anti-Discrimination in AI Hackathon
- 2021Joined Speakers Academy as my agent
- 2025Over 40 stages annually
- 2025Published the Brand Humanizing book
Want to work together
What I love most is helping people and technology work together in a way that actually makes work and life more human.