Why I do this
I believe there is a job out there that fits everyone.
Not as a slogan, but as something I had to learn myself, the hard way. This is the story behind the mission.
Not as a slogan, but as something I had to learn myself, the hard way. This is the story behind the mission.
For years I thought good work was mostly a matter of smart organising: the right structure, the right incentives, the right technology. Until I hit my own limits. A burnout doesn’t get solved with a better org chart.
What I learned: people aren’t resources you deploy optimally. They’re people, with energy that can run out and meaning they need in order to keep going. That experience has made me calmer as a change expert ever since, and more honest as a speaker. I don’t just talk about systems that could be better. I also talk about the human being who has to stay standing inside them.
Entrepreneurship showed up early: at sixteen I started my first small IT company. After that I took a detour through consulting. From 2004 to 2013 I worked at Alares, an organisational consultancy, where I learned how organisations really think about change, well before I started building it myself.
With Part-up I built a marketplace where work revolved around tasks and contributions, not job titles. In 2018 that work earned the New Organising Award, and we spoke in the Dutch House of Representatives about the platform economy. More importantly: every day we saw that people who “didn’t fit” on paper delivered excellent work once you looked at tasks and talent instead of CVs.
Those years confirmed what I had only sensed intuitively before: the problem is rarely the people. It’s how we organise, describe and divide work. In 2021 Part-up was acquired by Prevermo and folded into Amplooi, a fitting close, and immediately the reason to look for something new.
At 8vance I saw, for the first time, technology that could do at scale what Part-up was still trying to do by hand: make visible the talent organisations can’t see themselves. AI that looks past job titles and CVs, and matches on tasks, skills and potential. In healthcare, government, education and corporates I see the results every day: the baker who becomes an EV-charger technician, the nurse who turns out to fit a role nobody had imagined for her.
That’s why I became Chief Evangelist, and why I keep speaking about it: not because AI is the newest toy, but because it finally makes possible what should have been fair all along, the best person for every job, and the best job for every person.
The quality of our society is largely determined by the quality of the matches we make: between people and work, between talent and organisations, between who someone is and what they could still become. Most systems look at the past: diplomas, job titles, years of experience. I believe we should look at potential.
That’s the common thread running through my work, my book The Art of Matching, and every keynote I give.
I’m not a techno-optimist who believes AI solves everything on its own. But I am convinced AI forces us to finally make honest choices about how we organise work. What can be automated, should be automated. What must remain human should be protected and valued more, not less.
That tension — between acceleration and humanity — is exactly what I speak about on stages and inside organisations. Not as a scare story, but as an assignment: responsible AI sometimes means moving faster, not slower.
Work is bigger than jobs.
Organisations are human systems.
Organisations don’t lack potential — they lack sight of potential.
AI makes human qualities more important, not less.
Change starts with people who feel seen and taken seriously.
Technology accelerates. People process more slowly. Good leadership bridges the gap.
Humanity is becoming a strategic capability.
Responsible AI sometimes means moving faster.
I’m happy to tailor it to your organisation, sector and audience.
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