Gustavo is a journalist born in São Paulo and has a Master Degree in New Media & Digital Culture by the University of Amsterdam. He is passionate about communication, arts and everything that involves culture. He has worked many years with educational events, traveling and PR and branding.

In São Paulo Gustavo worked closely with the best restaurants in the country, where he could develop his passion for food even more. He is loving cultural affairs, and lived in many places such Sevilla, Madrid, London and now in Amsterdam for the last 6 years.

His last project included cooking all Ottolenghi’s Plenty.

As a Living In Coordinator, Ed Heerschap works on the international living climate in the Eindhoven region. Living In believes that good living climate enables international talents to anchor more easily. Ed enjoys working with various people and organisations on new initiatives, addressing challenges from various cultural perspectives and getting a motivational boost from the creative energy in the ecosystem.

DUTCH SINGER / PRESENTOR

Andre Hazes Jr. is the son of Andre Hazes, one of the most beloved Dutch folk singers of all time. He followed in his father’s musical footsteps as a successful singer, TV presenter and regular performer at Amsterdam’s Ziggo Dome for an Andre Hazes tribute concert. In September 2010, Andre Hazes Jr released a cover album of his father’s most famous songs, called „Voor Jou, Van Jou,“ a collaboration with his sister Roxanne Hazes. He has since gone on to release the albums Samen solo, Mijn beste vriend and Leef.

Rien Stas was born and raised in Eindhoven and is a proud self-made inventor and business man. He is the inventor of the „Stas picture hanging system“ and „Goelst curtain rail systems“. 10 years ago, Rien started an environmental friendly coffee system, under the brand „The Coffeeduck Company“. Recently his company launched a Nespresso capsule that is 100% plant based and biodegradable, the Stascafe Biocaps.

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DUTCH ACTOR / PRESENTOR

Johnny de Mol is well-known as a presenter and actor. Johnny presents successful programs like SynDROOM (Golden Televizier ring 2015), Super Kids, and Wensboom on RTL4. In October 2015 Johnny won the Silver Televizier Star. In 2017 Johnny can be seen on TV with the programmes Hotel SynDROOM, Holland’s Got Talent and a new travelling programme. Besides presenting for RTL Johnny is a passionate ambassador and co-founder of the Het Vergeten Kind Foundation and the Movement on the Ground Foundation.

Photography: Ivo Geskus@SpecialPixels

Wim Bens studied Mathematics and Computer Science at the Eindhoven Technical University and graduated early 1988.

In 1996 Wim started his own interim management & consultancy firm called Bens & Partners. Since 2013 Wim is, in different roles, involved in more than 10 initiatives of Universities for Applied Research in setting up, building and running Centers of Expertise.

Since mid 2016 Wim is the CEO of UM Holding via which Maastricht University participates in strategic joint ventures amongst which the Brightlands Campusses in Limburg, InterUM, Scannexus, BioPartner, Chill, BioMedbooster, Enabling Technologies, DNalysis en TMFI.

Since late 2016, Wim is, on behalf of the Topteam of the Topsector Logistics, the national program manager of the Logistics “KennisDC’s”, a collobaration of 6 Universities of Applied Sciences, the sector associations TLN and Evofenedex and a number of national and regional partners.

Last but not least, Wim holds several positions as a Supervisory / Advisory Board member, is an informal investor in a few startups and is active as a trainer, coach and moderator.

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Yama is passionate about management of creativity, innovation and applications of these for social good. His background is in development economics. He has been working in development assistance in countries like Afghanistan, Kosovo and DR Congo. Here Yama found his passion for entrepreneurship and its importance and relevance for sustainable development. Due to his broad background and interests he has not only developed strong analytical skills but also social and communication skills. He enjoys being in a fast-paced environment and solve complex problems together.

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Theo grew up in The Netherlands with little awareness of his cultural roots in Uganda. He was born in Kenya, from a Dutch father and mother from Karamoja Uganda. The family immigrated to a small village in The Netherlands when Theo was five years old.

During his young years in The Netherlands Theo didn’t have many interest in his Karamojong roots, especially given that being a teenager in the western world comes with many distractions.

But this changed slowly when he started traveling in his twenties and connecting to people holding dual nationalities. The pride and knowledge they had of their cultural heritage inspired Theo to research more about his background.

So, in 2016 Theo set foot on his mother’s ancestral soil to learn more about his roots and little did he know that this journey was going to change his life…

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After his psychology sidestep at the Maastricht University, Siem Nozza graduated cum laude as creative communication manager. He has been concept developer ever since for both events as brands. In 2013 he started to develop new ways of making regions more sustainable by attracting its parties to already existing events like Extrema Outdoor (55.000 people) and the 3 days creative, Burning Man inspired festival Solar Weekend (30.000 each day). In 2015 Siem socially designed the DIT (‘Do It Together’) concept in Eindhoven to make regions more connected and sustainable by events. The DIT events took place twice at Strijp S Eindhoven and once in Taipei during the World Capital of Design 2016. The next DIT will be in the city centre of Eindhoven in May 2017.

Siem Nozza has worked for Extrema Events since 2002. Mainly responsible for brand management and concept development for events like Extrema Outdoor in the Netherlands, Oslo and Belgium, Solar Weekend in Spain and the Netherlands. He is currently developing a new event concept in the Dutch technology capital Eindhoven: DIT (‘Do It Together’), collaborating with local parties such as High Tech Campus, Design Academy Eindhoven, Fontys and University of Technology Eindhoven, connecting with international institutes such as Harvard University, TEDx, Taipei Tech University and MIT Boston to make the region more sustainable by connecting the dots in the quadruple helix.

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Recently Robert Schaeffer celebrated his 20th jubilee as a programmer at De Effenaar. “What happens between artist and audience during a performance is pure magic. It’s a connection that takes place on a higher level. At Pop stage ‘De Effenaar’ I see this magic as the core of our work.” Robert also thinks that the relation between artist and audience will change radically in the coming 25 years. This also means that the stage will no longer be bound to one location. The artists will play at any location in the city that fits their performance best. “The intense collaboration with our audience will enable us to continue to create unforgettable musical experiences, even in 2040.” De Effenaar also explores the role of AV/VR In future musical experiences through the Smart Venue program.

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René is an experienced designer of models and manifestations that are innovative and advanced in technology, information and networking. As a consultant René helps with the implementation of high tech to experience and product solutions. Since 2007 René has been the managing director for MAD, a laboratory, platform and provider for ‘emergent art’: art that flows out of the tension existing between cultural and technological developments. As manager of Mindhoven he helps to orchestrate bottom-up innovation trajectories for socially relevant themes to strengthen the Eindhoven community. René is also in charge of the program for the Eindhoven Maker Faire.

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Peter Kentie is managing director at Eindhoven365, the Eindhoven city marketing body. He loves to work on complex, multi-facetted projects in the area of marketing and brand building. Peter is one of the founders of renowned STRP Festival. In addition he managed marketing and media at Eindhoven’s soccer club PSV. He is chairman at Baltan Laboratories and has been actively involved (and still is) with the Dutch Design Week. Kentie is passionate about everything Estlandic and tries to bring the country into the spotlights wherever he can.

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Nacho Carbonell is an award winning designer who graduated in 2003 at the Spanish university Cardenal Herrera C.E.U. and the 27 of January 2007 at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Once graduated he created collections such as Evolution in 2009, which won him a nomination as Design of the Year by the London Design Museum, and which marked his ongoing collaboration with Galleria Rossana Orlandi.

His work is included in the collections of the Fnac-Fonds National D’art Contemporain (National Contemporary Art Collection, France), the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands, and in MoMA San Francisco, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Mint Museum in the United States. These institutions and their visitors are attracted by the uniqueness of materials and techniques applied in his works.

Nacho currently works with his team in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, were he has established his studio.

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Michiel is a student-entrepreneur finishing his master degree in sustainable energy at the TU/e in Eindhoven and KTH in Stockholm. He is motivated to work with the brightest and most ambitious on sustainability and innovative ideas. For his thesis he is analyzing big data from smart meters in Sweden and The Netherlands to better understand how we as a society can make our grids smarter and more fair at the same time. Together with another student he co-founded Taylor, a TU/e spin-off developing solar optimizing chip modules to integrate solar energy into our everyday lives. Finally he is part of a group of people at the TU/e who together are realizing “Innovation Space”: a physical place on campus where students, researchers, student teams, and start-ups can innovate together.

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Maarten, nick name Brozol, is a professional competitive swimmer. He is trained by Marcel Wouda in Eindhoven and he competed during the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro for the 400 meter free stroke. He was also part of the Dutch relay team on the 9200 meter free stroke, that won gold during the European Championships 2016 in London. He trained in Australia for six months at the Chandler Swim Club, one of the leading swim clubs down under. Maarten is now focused on the European and World Championships. His long term goal is, of course, Tokyo 2020.

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Joran is COO at StudyPortals, one of the fastest growing companies in the Netherlands. Headquartered in Eindhoven, this EdTech company is impacting the lives of millions of students. Their aim: to make education choice transparent globally, so students can find and compare their dream study options across borders.

Joran holds an M.Sc. in Industrial Design from the TU/e, studied abroad in the UK and worked at a premier design firm in Australia, resulting in a worldwide patented reusable water bottle invention.

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Joost is a 25 years old TU/e student who started a variety of companies back in 2011. From a philosophy of building scalable, automated businesses he launched several projects.Some of these are: Thuisladen.nl, a website for ordering charging stations for electrical cars,RijschoolRegister.nl, the largest platform for comparing driving schools in NL and Eventix.nl, an online e-Ticketing service.

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Gideon is a proficient and experienced Marketing & Retail professional with over 10 years of Sales and Marketing experience. His considerable experience in this field has included working in both domestic and international markets. He’s a creative, results and solution-driven, effective marketing specialist with a keen eye for detail. He created his own marketing campaign for War Child to climb Kilimanjaro in February 2015 in order to raise funds for War Child. He made FUNraising possible for brands to fundraise.

Since 2016 Gideon has his own Marketing Agency, G-Tail Marketing. He’s a blogger and speaker to share his great passion for marketing.

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Eline van de Kam (upasik ciravatthani, her Buddhist name), was born in the south of Holland and currently lives as a cityogi in Amsterdam. At the age of 13, she started meditating, accompanied by her parents. She studied psychology, and became a teacher. For the greater part of the nineties and beyond, she lived and worked abroad.

She teaches Buddhist oriented Yoga classes and guides people in their recovery from addiction, based on her own experience.

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Daan Melis (1969) studied at the Design Academy in Eindhoven. After that he worked in India, creating packaging and production methods for Unilever. This was the upbeat for founding a consulting company in 1999, named BRAINS FOR CHANGE. In 2001, he started the local magazine SOEPS in Eindhoven, a platform for creative talents. This was a strong fundament for EDHV, a multidisciplinary design studio. In 2009 he sold EDHV and left to Spain. Reinventing life using the creative approach on hospitality, interior and art projects.

In 2011, Daan came back to join the new city marketing organization Eindhoven365. For 4 years he led the process building the new Eindhoven brand as a fundament for the new strategy, new events, urban interventions, merchandise and brandstore.

In april 2016 Daan restarted his company Soeps: providing combined thinking from concept to marketing, from underground to citymarketing. Soep’s aim is to help the city and its residents to become alive so that their ambitions can be realized.

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Charlie MacGregor (40) is the founder and CEO of The Student Hotel, a company with strong core values reflecting inclusiveness, unity and social responsibility. Born and raised in Edinburgh, Charlie started working on building sites at the age of 16. By 25 he had bought a small student housing company in the UK. He redeveloped the assets and eventually sold the company 10 years later. In 2005 he moved to Amsterdam and created The Student Hotel with a mission to develop and operate 5,000 student beds within Benelux. Today this mission has been increased to 15,000 rooms by 2020.

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After working for Collistar, Madurodam and Humanitas, Caroline joined The Student Hotel last year as Central PR Manager.

Caroline was attracted by the way The Student Hotel has a positive impact on people, organizations and cities; this is exactly what she has been looking for – to work for a forward thinking, inspirational business and make good things happen. A mission that comes from her heart.

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Lillian has a Masters Degree in Political Science (International Relations and Transnational Government). She worked as a political advisor for politicians within Dutch National Government as well as for the European Parliament. As a lobbyist (advisor Public Affairs) she has been active for several clients such as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), School of Human Rights Research, association of research schools, Vrije Universiteit, Dutch Green Building Council. Recently Lillian assumed the role of CEO at the A’DAM Tower, where she is responsible for setting up a private member’s club in the A’DAM Toren for the top of the creative industry (currently 560 members and counting).

Jorge Alves Lino is a Portuguese designer, curator and researcher based in Eindhoven since 2007. He has an educational background in the arts, communication and experience design made in Portugal, Belgium, Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

Professionally, Jorge worked in advertisement, media production and user experience, in Norway, Germany, France and the Netherlands. His work is mostly related with the cross-overs between social design, smart societies, storytelling and value propositions – this makes it more or less natural for him to connect new media and design content with business development. Jorge works now as business leader of STRP, lector of the Fontys FutureMediaLab and researcher at the TU/e. His work with passion and enthusiasm honoured Jorge with a couple of awards and as one of the winners of the expat top-10 of Eindhoven.

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Jasper van Es is an Eindhoven based independent curator, creative producer and co-founder of the creative agency Biki90 / Toppers in Concept. Currently he is curating a groupshow called #VIRALVANDALS, opening the 5th of May in the artspace MU in Strijp-S, an exhibition about the second life of graffiti.

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Tessie Hartjes is co-founder of Team Blue Jay Eindhoven, a student team at the Eindhoven University of Technology. The team is motivated to explore, show and develop the technology for useful new drone applications. This led to „the first domestic drone“: a drone that is able to autonomously fly and navigate indoors, avoid but also pick up different objects, is interactive and safe to touch. Almost all of the software and hardware is made by our own students; combined with off the shelve components and state of the art technology from our partners such as Philips Lighting. To demonstrate the project, in April 2016 Team Blue Jay Eindhoven created the world’s first Drone Café which got worldwide media attention. In the Café visitors would place orders at, and be served by, drones. Over 2000 visitors were served over the course of three days and 300 flights.

Martin Johnston is the founder of Aqua di Santo a luxury sustainable-fashion brand launching at the end of 2016. The brand is a coming together of Johnston’s learnings over the past 20 years and will fuse cutting edge style with technology and a social purpose.

Leonie Stevens (30) is the hotel manager of The Student Hotel Eindhoven. She studied at the hospitality business school in Apeldoorn. Her experience in this field has included working as a trainer and consultant for various hospitality start-ups in Asia and Germany. In 2011 she decided to move back to Eindhoven where she found her passion for students while working at a social housing agency. Leonie joined The Student Hotel last year. She believes in the student spirit and her mission is to inspire the students and the young-at-hearts in Eindhoven.

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Walter was born and brought up in Brabant as a child of refugees. For many years he worked abroad, but he is now dedicated to support a better settling-in and stay for internationals in the Eindhoven region.

Milan Meyberg has been an active member of the Dutch event and music industry for over fifteen years, pushing boundaries in the cities of Groningen and Amsterdam . The pursuit of electronic music has always been a driving force to him, and brought him international DJ residencies and event management positions for leading Dutch nightclubs and festivals.During his time organizing events, Milan developed a keen interest in sustainability and extensively promoted the necessity for waste-free events. This interest was greatly cultivated during his time working on Club Paradigm’s “Part of the Shift” crowdfunding campaign, setting out to transform the former “Groningen Suikerunie Terrein” into first completely self-sufficient festival site of the Netherlands.To develop these sustainable ideas is no easy feat, but it’s a challenge Milan embraced fully. In 2015 and 2016 he won multiple awards for his sustainable design concepts, which he is now further developing at Amsterdam’s DGTL Festival. At DGTL, he manages the “Revolution” program where he has begun to redesign the energy, resource, food and waste systems (to name a few) and to develop practical applications for what he has dubbed “regenerative events”. The main goal of the “Revolution” program is to create DGTL’s blueprint for a circular –
economy based festival.

John Jorritsma (born 1956 in Bolsward) is a Dutch politician. He has been mayor of Eindhoven since 13 September 2016.

Tommy Hunter is Market Manager for the Lagunitas Brewing Company, focusing on the Netherlands. The Lagunitas Brewing Company is a brewery founded in 1993 in Lagunitas, California, The company is half-owned by Heineken International.

Marco is a master student in Computer Science and Co-founder of BIT Students.

10 months ago he and his study mate Dennis started BIT Students, a non-profit organisation run by students. BIT students grew to 37 students who are ‘bored at school’ and who call their studies “history lessons”. To learn and build cool IT projects on the newest techniques, BIT students do software projects for companies like Schiphol, Randstad, ABN AMRO, Marktplaats and de Correspondent.

In February 2018 they will open the Amsterdam branch of the successful Paris based school 42. Under the overall theme “Born to code”, the school will offer education for future programmers.

Christiaan Lieverse is an artist living and working in Eindhoven. His work is about the world today. Identity and diversity in a globalizing world; cultural identity and migration; social identity in a virtual environment; bioethics; the malleability of society – these are the themes he explores in his work.

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Igno Notermans (1993) is a graduate in Future Planet Studies and passionate about complex sustainability issues. He is convinced that societal issues need to be tackled from a transdisciplinary approach, including not only academic disciplines but also the arts and business. Igno believes that education is key for making this combination, where he actively works on by being an interviewer at Room for Discussion and working at a sustainability consultancy, TheRockGroup.

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Piet van der Wielen has a diverse background, starting in the military. He became a banker after six years in the Dutch Army and after 13 years of being a banker, he became CEO and shareholder of a large technical installation company.

In this period he restructured the company, sold it and became holding director for the buyer. Five years later he quit his job, used his time for his family and after a side step to an accountancy firm, he became advisor and program manager starting and growing companies for Brainport Development NV, Eindhoven’s local economic development agency. At the moment he set up several initiatives for the Brainport region such as Next Move and MKB financieringsgids. He is also in charge of the finance tables and the meet-and-match between Brainport start-ups and the CEO’s of the large family offices in the Brainport region.

Ailén Gamberoni is freelance journalist and founder of Cucina Italiana. Born and raised in Milan, Italy, Ailen always had a lot of professional ties with the Netherlands. A few months ago she decided to continue her life in Eindhoven and set up Cucina Italiana, a cooking studio where she educates the Dutch on real Italian food and culture. In addition, Ailen also writes a popular blog on food.

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Together with his business partner and head-brewer Erwin, Jaap Hermans (1973) opened brewpub Van Moll in 2013. Growing at high speed, Van Moll recently took a hugh step forward to be able to supply even more people with their beers and share their thoughts as to what they think is possible in life and what Van Moll stands for.

Before that, Jaap, a former History and Art School student, had worked in de bar-business for 14 years, at different places and for different bosses. Loving to work with people, collaboration at all levels and disciplines was given a major role in the way Van Moll was set up.

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Rikke is a master student Construction Management and Engineering at Eindhoven, University of Technology with smart cities as his main focus. In 2013 he started as the commissioner of professional relations in the board of his study association where he was responsible for organizing course related activities and promotion. In 2016 he started as a member of team VIRTUe where he was responsible for the external communication, human resources and planning. This studentteam of the university is one of the competing teams in the Solar Decathlon Middle East 2018 where they will compete with 21 teams of other top universities from all over the world to build the most sustainable house. Since the house will be placed in Dubai this will be a big challenge that needs to combine a lot of technical innovations and will become a pilot for the smart house of the future.

Dadara is a Dutch artist of Polish ancestry known for his flyers, paintings, album covers, statues and performance artwork.

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With a background in business non-profit, sales, marketing and hospitality, Alicia Watson has had the pleasure of being an entrepreneur in art, culture and food as well as working for some of the world’s most influential consumer and media brands. Currently settled at VIRTUE Worldwide, VICE Media’s in-house creative agency, Alicia is Head of Operations for the multi-national team creating impactful multi-channel brand content.

After touring around the world for 12 years with the band Peterpanspeedrock from Eindhoven, Leo Hoeksema founded an agency called Bureau Zwaardvis. Bureau Zwaardvis represents mainly national and international Roots, Americana and Blue Grass artists and organizes events such as Ticket for Tibet and Brandend Zand Festival. Currently, Leo is working on Dutch Chili Fest which is a festival with spicy, sustainable good food and cutting edge music.

On the side, Leo works as a supervisor during concerts, events and festivals in ‘het Klokgebouw’ in Eindhoven.

Martijn Paulen is CEO of Dutch Design Foundation, best known for organizing the Dutch Design Week each year. Over the last 15 years Dutch Design Week has attracted 295.000 visitors, 2500 designers, 110 locations and over 800 accredited press, establishing the festival as an important source for the future of design.

Martijn strongly believes in the implicit optimism that drives his organization and the designers they support: a believe that designers’ creativity has the potential to achieve change for the better.

Trained as a journalist and arts & cultural scientist at Erasmus University Angelique Spaninks’ career splits in two parts. The first half she spend in journalism writing about culture, cultural policy, visual arts, design, architecture, e-culture and managing the general news desk at a newspaper. After that Angelique switched to managing and curating at MU art space since 2005 and STRP Biennial since 2012. She combines general management and curation at both foundations based in Eindhoven. MU is one of the leading 4 ‘presentatie-instellingen’ for visual arts in the Netherlands (next to De Appel, Witte De With and Marres). STRP Biennial is the leading and most hybrid indoor festival for creative technology in the Netherlands.

When Jaehoon Cho hopped into bed with Charlie MacGregor during last year’s BedTalks, he was still a student in Amsterdam, trying to find his purpose. BedTalks gave him the courage and the confidence to confront an issue that was very close to his heart – the stigma of depression in Korea, a country with the highest depression and suicide rate of all OECD countries. Jaehoon is now the founder of The Stella Foundation, named after his mother, which sets out to create awareness and an open environment for discussion about depression in a bid to reduce the number of suicides in Korea.

Afke Reijenga is a yin and vinayasa yoga teacher and spiritual warrior. She is also co-founder of Because We Carry, a charity organization that delivers baby carriers (and joy and hope) to refugee families in Lesvos. In addition to sharing her yoga enthusiasm and practices in the Netherlands, she also hosts Magical Yoga retreats in Ibiza, India, Switzerland, Thailand and Africa.

Jesse Koenders is Team Manager and Engineer at University Racing Eindhoven. University Racing Eindhoven, URE for short, is the largest student project of TU Eindhoven. The URE team consists of more than 50 talented students, mostly coming from the faculties Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Industrial Design. The goal of the multidisciplinary team is to design, build, test and race an electric race car in just one year. During summer the team competes in the international Formula Student competition, the biggest and most prestigious engineering competition worldwide.

Benjo is a firestarter at Studio Why and the founder of D.school Studio.Why.

STUDIO.Y’s primary responsibility is to help prepare a generation of young talents to rise with the challenges of our times.

They welcome talents with a design thinking methodology for innovation that combines creative and analytical approaches, and requires collaboration across disciplines. This process draws on methods from engineering and design, and combines them with ideas from business economics, social sciences, and insights from the business world.

Michiel is a student Architecture, Building and Planning at Eindhoven, University of Technology. In 2015 he started LumenUs with some other students. This team designed an interactive construction that was exhibited at GLOW 2016. In the same year he started as a honors student at the university where a group of students had start a project related to smart cities. This resulted in team VIRTUe where he became the deputy manager and is now also responsible for external communication. This studentteam of the university is one of the competing teams in the Solar Decathlon Middle East 2018 where they will compete with 21 teams of other top universities from all over the world to build the most sustainable house. Since the house will be placed in Dubai this will be a big challenge that needs to combine a lot of technical innovations and will become a pilot for the smart house of the future.

Though he was born in Holland, the Island blood (Aruba – Caribbean) in Kimo’s veins has always made him look for an international connection. Therefore when he started EHN in 2015 it all fell into in place. He believes that the people in the city you move to and at the company you work for make or break your stay as an expat.

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After 19 years at Philips Design, Dido van Klinken resigned to pursue a dream – to start his own bakery, Stadsbakkerij Broodt, in Eindhoven. Stadsbakkerij Broodt is organic sourdough bakery where bread meets design.

Moyee Coffee is world’s first FairChain coffee brand and was named ‘Best radical innovator of the Netherlands’ by Stichting Doen. The global coffee chain is broken and Guido van Staveren van Dijk is on a mission to fix it, whilst bringing radically good coffee with radical impact to you.

Frank van den Eijnden is the Director of Van Gogh Brabant and Senior Program Manager at Visit Brabant. 

Paolo Destilo (1996), a student of Politics, Psychology, Law and Economics at the University of Amsterdam. Born in the Netherlands, lived in Zambia (Africa) but grew up in a small village of 300 people in Italy. His ultimate goal is to go into Italian Politics and revive the dead there. Loves travelling, mindfulness and sports, and talks to you in many languages.

Max Aerts was born and raised in Gerwen a village in the shade of Eindhoven, the Netherlands. He studied one year of biomedical science at the KU (Catholic University) in Leuven, Belgium and finished his Bachelor Industrial Design Engineering Cum Laude at Eindhoven University of Technology. During his bachelor years Max founded his first company Findur, which developed a new shopping platform to facilitate the service gap between online and offline shopping. The platform currently operates successfully with more than 2000 shops in the Netherlands. Besides his study he also participated in the Honors program of the University in which he was part of an energy-related project. During this project they developed a 20cm scale model car that was able to drive on formic acid thanks to a newly discovered catalyst from the University. After the project Max’s and his colleagues decided to push the project forward with student-run Team FAST. Currently Team FAST, 35 students strong, is developing a 12M city bus that will drive on formic. Max and his team now have the ambition to lift this project to the next level, into a startup.

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Edwin Korst is a long-time fitness entrepreneur and owner of SX Sportsclub, a boutique health and fitness club based in Eindhoven. SX Sportsclub is a unique lifestyle gym that focuses on flexibility and commitment and invites members to challenge themselves, both mentally and physically.

Kari Spijker (1994), studies both philosophy and law at the VU in Amsterdam. She also works as Jr Consultant at Capital Big Data.

With Thomas Hobbes as her favorite philosopher, Martha Nussbaum as her example in life and amaretto sour as her ideal drink on a Thursday night, she can’t wait for a fun debate at the BedTalks!

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Pim Ten Thije is a Student of Comparative Law. He also works as Interviewer and Editor at Room For Discussion.

Bas Schleijpen is founder & organizer of HEX and co-founder of the Dutch Coding Company.

In her quest to activate online and app-based initiatives for good, Eve founded Hollaback! Nederland, part of a worldwide network of sites that use technology to map and fight street harassment. Each dot on Hollaback’s map tells a story and has the potential to incite serious policy change and a reframing of the way we move and interact in public spaces in the Netherlands (and beyond). Powered by Hollaback!’s collective storytelling platform, Eve’s work aims to bring an innovative form of community building to the forefront of Dutch urban and gender policy agendas.

Eve’s own experiences of being hissed at, spat on and once even punched in the face from Washington to Cairo drove her to start Hollaback! Nederland. Through her work, countless stories of women, LGBTQ folks and people of color being catcalled, groped or harassed in public came to the surface, painting a clear picture of the problem and laying a solid foundation for change.

Ryan Bahadoer is the son of Soenil Bahader, chef at Michelen-starred Restaurant Lindehof in Nuenen. After years of working in high end restaurants, Ryan decided to join The Pool Eindhoven where he can embrace his “rebel chef attitude” and experiment with innovative dishes.