Leadership for a Better World
An Online Community from October 2020 until June 2021
Each of the eight online sessions will have a speaker who will introduce the topic. The speakers will adress three different levels:
- Societal level, e.g. Steven de Waal about leaders as citizens
- Organizational level, e.g. Hein Schumacher about how his company contributes to a better world
- Individual level, e.g. Merel van Vroonhoven about her personal impact on society
Herman Wijffels
21 December 2020
Professor Sustainability and Social Change at Utrecht University
Herman Wijffels is Professor Sustainability and Social Change at Utrecht University. He had a variety of jobs during his career, including CEO of Rabobank, administrator at the World Bank and Chairman of the Dutch Social-Economic Council. He is also known as the best prime-minister that the Netherlands never had. Wijffels states that ecological, societal and spiritual changes are happening simultaneously in our lifetime.


4 February 2021
CEO FrieslandCampina
17 March 2021
President of IMD
Jean-François Manzoni is the President of IMD, where he also serves as the Nestlé Professor. IMD is an internationally acclaimed business school, based in Lausanne, Switzerland. His research, teaching, and consulting activities are focused on leadership, the development of high-performance organizations and corporate governance.


Hanneke Faber
13 April 2021
President Foods & Refreshment at Unilever
Hanneke Faber is President Foods & Refreshment at Unilever. In this role she is responsible for Unilever’s ice cream, tea and Foods categories globally, including Unilever Food Solutions. She is also a member of the Unilever Executive.
Hanneke speaks Dutch, English, French, German and Greek. She has lived and worked in the US, Greece, Switzerland and the Netherlands. She is married and has three children.
Social entrepreneur.


Geraldine Matchett
17 June 2021
Co-Chief Executive Officer & Chief Financial Officer and Member of the Managing Board of Royal DSM
Before joining DSM, Geraldine worked with the SGS Group where she held various positions including Corporate Finance Manager and Group Financial Controller, before being appointed Global Chief Financial Officer in March 2010. In this role, she was once voted CFO of the year in Switzerland for large companies. Before joining SGS she worked for Deloitte in Switzerland and for KPMG in the UK, obtaining her Chartered Accountant qualification while working in London.
Steven de Waal
8 October 2020
Chairman of the Public Space Foundation
Steven is the chairman of Theatre Utrecht, a member at the Utrecht Development Board and is a lecturer at several institutes. He was a partner in Strategy and Management Group Boer & Croon for nineteen years and served as board member and board chair for a number of these years. He also served in the leadership of the Dutch labor party PvdA.


Merel van Vroonhoven
10 November 2020
Teacher in special education
Merel van Vroonhoven has abandoned a succesful corporate career to become a teacher in special education. She was the Chair of the Dutch Authority Financial Markets (AFM) from 2014 until 2019. She explained her choice to step down by saying: “After twenty years of working at board level, the last ten years of which have been in the public sector, I am now looking to make a more direct contribution. Closer to the people that are in the most need.” Apart from training as a primary school teacher, Merel van Vroonhoven currently is amongst others a supervisory board member at Stichting Lezen, Het Kunstmuseum, et al. and she contributes a series of articles about her transfer to the Dutch daily De Volkskrant. Prior to joining AFM she was a board member at NS Group (Dutch Railways), at ING Investment Management Europe and at insurance company Nationale-Nederlanden.