Speakers⁶

For say, it is rather turbulent in the world. It feels like we are stumbling from crisis to crisis. That’s because our systems and institutions are dated and no longer doing what they were designed to do. There has never been a better time in our history to redesign and reshape our future.

Where are the opportunities that we don’t see now, let alone take advantage of? How should we connect with the emerging future and what role and responsibility is there for governments and for the business community? Not to mention for ourselves? How do we create together the world everyone longs for?

Make your event an unforgettable experience and go with Ruud on an exiting expedition to the unleashed future. Maximum impact with lots of interaction and examples of best practices.

Speaker, scientist, professor and world champion soccer-playing robots; Maarten Steinbuch simply cannot be pigeonholed. A brief summary of his career: he studied Mechanical Engineering at TU Delft, where he later obtained his PhD in Measurement and Control Technology. He worked for 12 years as a mechanical engineer (Philips) and at the age of 39 started working as a professor at TU Eindhoven.

Maarten takes his audience on a journey to the future and tells them about the speed of technological developments and their impact on our lives. When he speaks people are on the edge of their seat; young, old, scientist, director or engineer. And if not him, his faithful companion will make sure of that; a small, robotic dinosaur that even impressed the Dalai Lama in 2018.

Rumbling in the margins

Once Harm saw Princess Irene speaking in front of a group of people about sustainability. An 88-year-old man in the audience exclaimed, “I’m doing it all for my grandchildren“. Irene – then also in her 80s – replied somewhat piqued “if you don’t think life is worth doing it for yourself, then it won’t be anything!”

“That’s the way I see it. If you only do it for your children or grandchildren, you don’t really feel it. You also have to want it for yourself, for nature, for everything on earth.”

And it’s desperately needed too. Ecosystems are on the verge of collapse, deforestation, freshwater and resource shortages, plastic soup. Or in Harm’s words, “It’s drama! The Earth Overshoot Day is at the end of July, which means 5 months of living at the expense of the future, every year.” His lectures are a plea to stop messing around on the margins, and get two feet in the new economy.

“Companies need to stop lying to us, young people need to demand a better future from those currently in power, and we need to dream and act bigger and more radically.“

A truly sustainable business model requires radical thinking, but it is possible, Ankie van Wersch knows. She is founder of Tika foundation, a foundation offering programmes for underprivileged children and young people in Nepal. She is also CEO of Powered by Enviu, an organisation that builds business models that create value for people and the environment.

Perhaps it is her grandfather’s words; ‘you must always do the right thing’, or perhaps it is her own experiences; ‘children are still dying of hunger’. Probably it is a combination of both that drive her to make the world a nicer place. And she successfully does so in various ways.

“We have reduced avocado waste by 95%, saved billions of litres of water, and prevented 25 million single-use plastics from ending up in the ocean. We also set up a pension fund in Ghana for people without formal jobs. They can now also build something for later.”

Although Ankie’s stories don’t leave you cold, a positive tone prevails in her lectures. She tells inspiringly that it can be done; as a company, making a positive impact on the environment and people’s lives. ‘Thinking big and starting small‘ is her motto.

Frank has been analyzing nature and environmental problems for decades; it could just as easily have been other social problems, such as those in healthcare or the housing market. What he finds particularly repulsive is “trying to justify what is wrong”. As far as he is concerned, knowledge is an important key to change.

“I always found it most interesting to work from an underdog position, as the challenger. You must be three times better prepared than your ‘opponent’; the one who defends the status quo from his established position. “

For solutions that work, Frank Dietz says we need to recognize the complexity of nature and environmental issues. More solar panels on rooftops are great, but are the power lines ‘thick’ enough to get the generated power to users? And who benefits from that green power and who bears extra burdens as a result? And will companies still be able to make steel and plastics if the fossil sources currently needed to do so are phased out? And will airline holidays still be possible? All these consequences and potentially clashing interests must be kept in mind to avoid suboptimal solutions as much as possible.

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Meet Wim Schepens, a quirky speaker and author who sees storytelling as his personal form of activism. Wim knows how to build bridges between different worlds, with his versatile background as an editor-in-chief and program maker at VPRO and his sharp societal view.

In his book “Leven met een trui aan” and through lectures, he shares his personal sustainability dilemmas and his fascination with nature, ecosystems, and the environment in a humorous and recognizable way. By doing so, he invites you to join him in thinking about the great challenges now and in the future.

“You can’t control nature; you can’t say this animal can, but that one cannot. Everything is connected through ecosystems and us humans depend on that as well.”

Discover how Wim connects the personal and societal and why he is such a relevant speaker on sustainability dilemmas for your audience right now. His lectures have a personal and critical touch while staying humorous  and hopeful.

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