Always have somethin'
cookin'
A SHORT HISTORY OF MY WORK.
Oasis
2022 - Today
Netherlands
Viet Nam
Cambodia
China
Turkey
India
Pakistan
Poland
United States
Oasis recently went on tour to these two countries!
Oasis grew out of our need for a system that could easliy collect and manage a vast number of stories. Today Oasis has more than 4000 stories (and loads of associated information and data) tucked away in a database.
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Oasis is more than a library, each story can be linked with other similar stories to form storylines around shared locations. These storylines can grow and change over time, offering us a glimpse of how our work changes over time.
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We are also working on a new set of visualizations that will let us find new, previously undiscovered patterns in our stories across the organization.
WE Program
2020 - Today
Netherlands
Viet Nam
Cambodia
China
Turkey
India
Pakistan
Most of my work in the past fours years has been for the WE Program, a dialogue-based human rights program that works in factories across Asia.
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I started as a desk researcher, reading reports and studying evaluation methods. Then I moved into the experimental evaluatio space, where I combined story work with big data to search for patterns at large and small scales quickly.
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Now I wear many hats in the WE Program, a number of them technical in nature. But at my core, for the WE Program, I am still an evaluator working to make sense of stories. The WE Program is great.
DISC
2020 - Today
Netherlands
USA
Even when I'm telling stories, giving talks, and hosting storytelling evenings with the Dutch International Storytelling Centre I am still a Story Engineer at heart.
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DISC is where I started the first MythLab experiment, hosted my first public podcast, and first really started diving in AI storytelling. It also made connections for me around the world, giving me the chance to share my stories and work back home!
University of Leiden
2023 - 2024
Netherlands
I wasn't sure what to expect when I took a project working with a classicist working with the concept of Homo Economicus! Turns out it can make for some really interesting conversations.
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Aside from the publicly available podcast we produced, I also helped students at the university start their own podcast and created a set of mini-podcasts for a conference. Most importantly, we got to MythLab again!
Spark Narration
2022 - 2023
Netherlands
Suriname
This was my first real experience with culturally sensitive stories. Thankfully, my friend Thirza set me up with two more expert Surinamese storytellers. I spent a lot of time researching and listening to their stories, mostly learning about a history and style of storytelling that was totally new to me.
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It was also great fun. We laughed a lot, even though the stories could be heavy at times. And I'm very proud of the stories we were able to collect.
Click here to see the story.
Justice & Peace
2020 - 2022
Netherlands
Peru
The Gambia
Even though my work with Justice & Peace was as a journalist, the time spent with three human rights defenders greatly influenced how I see the world and my work.
TU Delft
2020 - 2023
Netherlands
I started a large sense-making project with the university in early 2020, just as we were wrapping up our documentary work in Solotvyno.
Then COVID-19 came along and washed that project, along with almost everything else it seems, away.
I documented the first month of the lockdown with a daily podcast, making sense of what was happening on interview at a time. I still regularly host workshops and talks at my old stomping grounds.
Master's Degree
Engineering & Policy Analysis
TU Delft
"Regular" Engineering
2011-2017
Germany
Japan
Spain
Poland
Slovenia
India
Germany
United States
Before I went and got my master's degree, I was a "regular" engineer. In my second stint in Germany, I worked on Nissan projects as the lead engineer. It was tough, unglamorous work. I got to travel a lot though, and I spent much of time either in the lab or the factory, learning the ins and out of measurements.
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In India before that I had my best job, as the Liason Engineer for a factory in India trying to learn how to build a helicopter. I juggled schedules, evaluated parts, and hosted lots of meetings. We had a huge team and made great time once things got running in the factory.
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Most notably before all of that is probably my time in flight test, where I was first introduced to large-scale data collection system.