Jan lives with his wife in Delft in the Netherlands. He is a founding member of Resolve Parkinson’s.
Jan has a Master’s degree in Telecommunication technology from Delft University, his master’s thesis even was awarded. He started his career as a research engineer at the research institute of KPN, the incumbent telephone operator in the Netherlands. There, as a member of an international team, he co-created the GSM specification, the first standardized digital mobile network.
In personal development education he discovered that telecommunication technology wasn’t his primal drive, human interaction is. Attention to this insight made him a pure, grounded man and a management career in KPN started:
- Manager of a research team
- Line and/or project manager of development teams
- Unit manager of a KPN IT department that had to be professionalized and reorganized.
When the telco market became open in the Netherlands he interrupted his KPN career by moving to innovation management positions at cable providers. On request, he returned 16 years later to KPN to assist in defining the network changes needed to stay the leading broadband provider in the Netherlands.
Jan and his wife have 3 children and one grandchild. His children all got full Steiner/Waldorf education. Studying the Steiner values and approach Jan discovered that these fitted him very well and he actively supported the schools with his gathered skills and passion. As a volunteer, he took positions in school communication. He also set up and chaired a parent-school platform in their secondary school for many years.
Diagnosed in 2012, Parkinson’s forced him to stop working in 2021. Also to honor his mother who also suffered from PD, he became active in the Dutch Parkinson Vereniging as chairman of the working group complementary therapies. He wasn’t satisfied with the communication of complementary therapies and the progress to finding quality improvement and progression-inhibiting cures for PD. He also started to give presentations to PwP in order to share his personal experience with PD on how to stay positive and keep the direction in life with what the care system can offer and what alternatives are possible. During this period he became involved in Resolve Parkinson’s since it meets his passionate ambition to improve the life quality of PwP and find progression-inhibiting therapies for Parkinson’s Syndrome.
To contact Jan, please email [email protected].
