I was born in the mountains of British Columbia, to Dutch immigrants Roelof & Ineke. My childhood was spent skiing, reading a novel a day, and falling in love with science and literature. I graduated top student of my high school and moved to Vancouver. After a year in France to obtain a Maitrise d’Informatique (Master’s in Computer Science), I completed a Master’s in Artificial Intelligence research at the University of British Columbia. Upon graduating, I did industrial AI work at Bell-Northern Research in Ottawa for three years, then returned to Vancouver to work at MacDonald Dettwiler Associates (MDA), in systems engineering for various governments around the world. After 27 years of escalating responsibility, visiting China, Israel, most of the United States, and pockets of the Middle East & Europe, I moved to Milwaukee, where my partner is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin.
I currently work at a Fortune 500 company managing global business transformations.
