I develop products that create meaningful impact—for people, the planet, and profit. I help companies and organizations navigate their innovation funnel, crafting a clear roadmap for the positive change they can achieve with their products and services. With successive innovations mapped out, I provide support and guidance through the entire process, from design to development and implementation.

I work alongside in-house design teams on the ideation and initial design of new products. For those without a design team, I collaborate with other designers from our Makers Team to develop products from concept to completion. Yes, I love designing—not just as a noun, but as a verb. Bringing something new and beautiful to life gives me energy, especially when working as part of a team. Understanding users, finding smart solutions, making detailed drawings, and iterating through countless prototypes—these are the elements that make design exciting for me.

With over 30 years of experience in product development, I began my career fresh from TU Delft/Industrial Design as a designer at General Electric in Pittsfield, MA, USA. There, I worked on innovations for residential construction, gaining not only my first hands-on experience as a designer but also valuable insights into American business and society.

Driven by the ambition to establish a design agency, I returned to the Netherlands and co-founded FLEX/design with Jeroen Verbrugge. Under our leadership, FLEX grew into one of Europe’s leading product development agencies, with a team of 30+ design professionals. We developed both breakthrough and incremental innovations for major brands worldwide, including LEGO, Sara Lee, Unilever, Tefal, PostNL, Tennant, Albert Heijn, and Hero.

As pioneers in integrating insight-driven research into the product development process, we helped clients define their innovation funnel using proprietary research methods. I take pride in the many design awards we’ve won over the years (Dutch Design Award, Red Dot, iF Best of 10, ID, GIO Best of Category, Pentaward, Dieline, NL Packaging Award) and in knowing that some of our products are now part of museum collections (MoMa NY, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam). However, what I value most is the real impact of our designs—helping people adopt healthier lifestyles, contributing to a circular economy, supporting aging populations, reducing workloads, and adding joy to everyday life.

The most valuable experience a designer can have is bringing a product to market themselves. Only then do you truly see how complex challenges, practical constraints, and financial limitations shape the development process. That’s why I joined LOCOletter. Alongside Remon de Zeeuw, I helped bring an innovative chocolate letter concept to life. LOCOletter has been successfully sold and marketed for three years during the Dutch holiday season in both retail and B2B.

It’s incredibly rewarding to pass on my knowledge to young designers. At FLEX/design, I saw it as my role to guide and inspire designers in their first professional projects, a mission I continued as a teacher at the Design Academy and through guest lectures at various design schools.

Over the years, I have also served as a board member for several foundations and organizations, always looking to connect the creative industry with broader initiatives.

Since 2013, I have been a Generous Mind. In 2018, I made the difficult but fulfilling choice to sell my shares in FLEX/design to my longtime business partner Jeroen and dedicate myself fully to Generous Minds. This decision gave me the freedom to focus all my energy on projects and clients that create the greatest positive impact. At Generous Minds, I work with professionals from diverse backgrounds, allowing me to constantly learn and bring new value to the projects I contribute to as a designer.

In 1993, I developed a product for Sociale Werkvoorziening Rotterdam, an organization that provides employment for people with physical and/or mental challenges. At FLEX, we designed a small yet impactful product to manage excess electrical cables from lamps, appliances, laptops, and headphones. The CableTurtle, as it became known, has been sold more than 500,000 times annually since 1993. This not only provided a stable revenue stream but also created permanent jobs. Now recognized as a design icon, the CableTurtle has received multiple design awards and is part of the permanent collection at MoMa NY—a testament to how design can drive both social and commercial success.

Another example of design’s power is Seepje. The Generous Minds packaging design helped this incredible brand establish itself in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and the UK. As a result, Seepje is driving real impact—reducing plastic waste, lowering carbon footprints, and creating opportunities for women in Nepal. (For more details, check out my post on Seepje.)

Design and design thinking are incredibly powerful tools for tackling complex challenges. Together with Jacco de Haan and engineers from FLEX/design, I worked on a PostNL project to enable automated mail processing in sorting centers. Through creative problem-solving, co-creation with PostNL operators, extensive prototyping, and solid engineering, we delivered a robust solution that was successfully implemented in 2017. Today, no letter in the Netherlands is delivered without passing through our system.

I am deeply connected to Joan and my two sons. It’s hard to put into words how much joy I take in sharing life with them. I treasure the simple moments we have together—the trips, the meals we cook, and the stories we tell.