My older brother Floris and I looking dashing
I was born on Friday, August 5, 1983 as the second son in what would eventually be a family with three boys. While my parents divorced when I was 11, my childhood was generally a happy one. I went to primary school in my little village of Sterrebeek and to secondary school for four years at St-Josef’s College in Woluwe and then the final two years at the Holy Heart College (HHC) in Tervuren. Just before turning 17, I was diagnosed with a herniated disc and was told I could never play tennis again so I started playing guitar instead and started a band (I know the stereotype…)
My original Alma Mater, the university hidden in the city of Leuven
Because I was largely clueless as to what to study at university - my parents had decided for me the only viable university option was the one they both studied in - I decided to study Commercial Engineering - which was the same degree my closest friends and classmates at HHC were going to pursue as well. It turned out to be a sensible choice but to be honest I just got lucky. I may have ended up studying criminology as I dabbled with the idea of becoming a police investigator.
Ethicist Luc van Liederke under whose guidance I wrote my first dissertation Buddhist economics
In my penultimate year at the Catholic University of Leuven, I was looking for a dissertation topic while sitting behind a computer in the library and found there was an ethics professor who was looking for someone to write a dissertation on Buddhist economics. I had no idea what that was but because I had been frustrated for years with the neoclassical economics’ assumptions about what makes humans tick, I thought it may be interesting. That Prof was Luc van Liedekerke and he was having another 10 minutes of office hours literally 50m away from the library where I was sitting. It felt like destiny. I ended up writing my dissertation, inspired by the work of Hungarian ethicist Laszlo Zsolnai, trying to answer the insane question of how the capitalist economy would work if the goal was not profit maximization but the alleviation of all suffering.
Nottingham University, where I majored in Corporate Social Responsibility
Upon completing my degree, I decided to specialize in Corporate Social Responsibility. While even my dissertation supervisor in Belgium advised against it (“You will never make as much money with this additional degree than without it”), I ended up getting a no-rent loan from the Fernand Lazard Foundation and moving to the University of Nottingham for a wonderful year that felt like an Erasmus exchange. In that year, a friend of mine sent me a TedX talk of Bill McDonough, the father of “Cradle to Cradle”. 20 years later the video is now mandatory material in all my sustainability courses. After seeing the talk for the first time, I knew I would dedicate the rest of my life to environmental sustainability.
The hard work of Cradle to Cradle Design at Beco for a project with Philips on circular flatscreen TVs
After my Nottingham degree I spent one year traveling South America, only to come back to Belgium in October 2008, only weeks after the Lehman Brothers’ collapse. Needless to say it was not a great time for sustainability. I spent over a year working in bars and even studying a new degree in international commerce before finally landing a job in sustainability consulting at a boutique firm called BECO. Unfortunately, the work focused mainly on sustainability reporting and energy efficiency which was not my jam, so I convinced my CEO to let me start a new business line on sustainability and business model innovation. She was awesome and supportive and it did not take long before we were doing large projects focusing on sustainable business model design and circular economy. I learnt a lot, penned those lessons down in my first book, and then called it quits.
Prof Andy Crane, the man who convinced me to move to Imperial College for my PhD
I wanted to move back into academia. I had explored various options and was considering a move to Chile to pursue my PhD there. I called upon Andy Crane, a former professor of mine at Nottingham, and shared what I was thinking about. He happened to be in Amsterdam, decided to come down to Antwerp for dinner the next day, and talked me out of it. He convinced me to try and go to Imperial College London and work with Gerry George. On the way back from dinner, I fell off my bike, broke my arm, and got 1 month paid leave. Online I found I had three weeks until the PhD application deadline. Somehow the stars were aligning again.
Gerry George, my supervisor, mentor, and co-author without whom my life would have been incredibly different
33 months into my PhD at Imperial, Gerry called me into his office on a Tuesday morning. He was moving to Singapore, and I had to finish my PhD in two months (instead of 15). If I managed, he would offer me a postdoc position at Singapore Management University. 8 hours before, the girl I was seeing decided we were not gonna work out. Most of my close friends in London were finishing their PhDs as well so I did not need much convincing.
The Lee Kong Chian School of Business, where my academic career truly started
I joined SMU as a postdoc in 2015, and was promoted to a tenure track position in July 2016 after publishing my first SMJ article. The next few years I continued refining my dissertation papers which would eventually get published in 2019 and 2020 in respectively JMS and JOM while also publishing my first book and natural resource management.
Together with Ryan Merrill in the mangrove swamps and the beginning of Global Mangrove Trust
In 2018, I was awarded a grant to study innovation in the natural world, which led to a long search for a post-doctoral researcher that I eventually found at an academic conference. Ryan Merrill had just finished his PhD in Energy Policy and already lived in Thailand with his wife. He would commute to Singapore and started leading the case study writing the grant required us to do. Our first life-changing event together was a trip to Myanmar to study the work of Arne Fjortoft and Worldview International Foundation in mangrove restoration. Some day after work, we went for drinks and Ryan told me he had set up a non-profit called Global Mangrove Trust and made me director. Suddenly, I was an entrepreneur
Sustainable Digital Finance in Asia - commissioned work for the UN and DBS Bank
In 2019 we published “Sustainable Digital Finance in Asia”, a report commissioned by the UN, the Sustainable Digital Finance Alliance, and DBS Bank. The report was discussed by former DBS CEO Piyush Gupta at Davos and explored the potential of digital technology in transforming how organizations tackle sustainable development. That, in combination with the blockchain and machine learning technology we had been developing and studying at Global Mangrove Trust eventually sparked the interest of an old friend of mine, Mathias Boissonot.
Mathias Boissonot, Ryan Merrill, and I - Handprint Founders
At the start of 2020, Matthias, Ryan, and I had co-founded Handprint Tech, a digital tech company that sought to transform how businesses capture value from the creation of positive impact in the world. Initially focusing on mangroves and e-commerce, over the years, our scope has expanded to all kinds of UN SDG-aligned impact and broadened to all types of sectors, with a specific focus on banking, loyalty, and fintech.
Mathias Boissonot, Ryan Merrill, and I - Handprint Founders
At the start of 2020, Matthias, Ryan, and I had co-founded Handprint Tech, a digital tech company that sought to transform how businesses capture value from the creation of positive impact in the world. Initially focusing on mangroves and e-commerce, over the years, our scope has expanded to all kinds of UN SDG-aligned impact and broadened to all types of sectors, with a specific focus on banking, loyalty, and fintech.
Wedding Day with my beloved, Anna
In December 2020, I married the love of my life Anna in the midst of the Covid pandemic on a boat in Singapore. For us it was a special day of course and for all our friends, it was the biggest party of 2020.
Theo and Mia are a few months old here
In 2021, our children Theo and Mia were born on April fools day.
My older brother Floris and I looking dashing
I was born on Friday, August 5, 1983 as the second son in what would eventually be a family with three boys. While my parents divorced when I was 11, my childhood was generally a happy one. I went to primary school in my little village of Sterrebeek and to secondary school for four years at St-Josef’s College in Woluwe and then the final two years at the Holy Heart College (HHC) in Tervuren. Just before turning 17, I was diagnosed with a herniated disc and was told I could never play tennis again so I started playing guitar instead and started a band (I know the stereotype…)
My original Alma Mater, the university hidden in the city of Leuven
Because I was largely clueless as to what to study at university - my parents had decided for me the only viable university option was the one they both studied in - I decided to study Commercial Engineering - which was the same degree my closest friends and classmates at HHC were going to pursue as well. It turned out to be a sensible choice but to be honest I just got lucky. I may have ended up studying criminology as I dabbled with the idea of becoming a police investigator.
Ethicist Luc van Liederke under whose guidance I wrote my first dissertation Buddhist economics
In my penultimate year at the Catholic University of Leuven, I was looking for a dissertation topic while sitting behind a computer in the library and found there was an ethics professor who was looking for someone to write a dissertation on Buddhist economics. I had no idea what that was but because I had been frustrated for years with the neoclassical economics’ assumptions about what makes humans tick, I thought it may be interesting. That Prof was Luc van Liedekerke and he was having another 10 minutes of office hours literally 50m away from the library where I was sitting. It felt like destiny. I ended up writing my dissertation, inspired by the work of Hungarian ethicist Laszlo Zsolnai, trying to answer the insane question of how the capitalist economy would work if the goal was not profit maximization but the alleviation of all suffering.
Nottingham University, where I majored in Corporate Social Responsibility
Upon completing my degree, I decided to specialize in Corporate Social Responsibility. While even my dissertation supervisor in Belgium advised against it (“You will never make as much money with this additional degree than without it”), I ended up getting a no-rent loan from the Fernand Lazard Foundation and moving to the University of Nottingham for a wonderful year that felt like an Erasmus exchange. In that year, a friend of mine sent me a TedX talk of Bill McDonough, the father of “Cradle to Cradle”. 20 years later the video is now mandatory material in all my sustainability courses. After seeing the talk for the first time, I knew I would dedicate the rest of my life to environmental sustainability.
The hard work of Cradle to Cradle Design at Beco for a project with Philips on circular flatscreen TVs
After my Nottingham degree I spent one year traveling South America, only to come back to Belgium in October 2008, only weeks after the Lehman Brothers’ collapse. Needless to say it was not a great time for sustainability. I spent over a year working in bars and even studying a new degree in international commerce before finally landing a job in sustainability consulting at a boutique firm called BECO. Unfortunately, the work focused mainly on sustainability reporting and energy efficiency which was not my jam, so I convinced my CEO to let me start a new business line on sustainability and business model innovation. She was awesome and supportive and it did not take long before we were doing large projects focusing on sustainable business model design and circular economy. I learnt a lot, penned those lessons down in my first book, and then called it quits.
Prof Andy Crane, the man who convinced me to move to Imperial College for my PhD
I wanted to move back into academia. I had explored various options and was considering a move to Chile to pursue my PhD there. I called upon Andy Crane, a former professor of mine at Nottingham, and shared what I was thinking about. He happened to be in Amsterdam, decided to come down to Antwerp for dinner the next day, and talked me out of it. He convinced me to try and go to Imperial College London and work with Gerry George. On the way back from dinner, I fell off my bike, broke my arm, and got 1 month paid leave. Online I found I had three weeks until the PhD application deadline. Somehow the stars were aligning again.
Gerry George, my supervisor, mentor, and co-author without whom my life would have been incredibly different
33 months into my PhD at Imperial, Gerry called me into his office on a Tuesday morning. He was moving to Singapore, and I had to finish my PhD in two months (instead of 15). If I managed, he would offer me a postdoc position at Singapore Management University. 8 hours before, the girl I was seeing decided we were not gonna work out. Most of my close friends in London were finishing their PhDs as well so I did not need much convincing.
The Lee Kong Chian School of Business, where my academic career truly started
I joined SMU as a postdoc in 2015, and was promoted to a tenure track position in July 2016 after publishing my first SMJ article. The next few years I continued refining my dissertation papers which would eventually get published in 2019 and 2020 in respectively JMS and JOM while also publishing my first book and natural resource management.
Together with Ryan Merrill in the mangrove swamps and the beginning of Global Mangrove Trust
In 2018, I was awarded a grant to study innovation in the natural world, which led to a long search for a post-doctoral researcher that I eventually found at an academic conference. Ryan Merrill had just finished his PhD in Energy Policy and already lived in Thailand with his wife. He would commute to Singapore and started leading the case study writing the grant required us to do. Our first life-changing event together was a trip to Myanmar to study the work of Arne Fjortoft and Worldview International Foundation in mangrove restoration. Some day after work, we went for drinks and Ryan told me he had set up a non-profit called Global Mangrove Trust and made me director. Suddenly, I was an entrepreneur
Sustainable Digital Finance in Asia - commissioned work for the UN and DBS Bank
In 2019 we published “Sustainable Digital Finance in Asia”, a report commissioned by the UN, the Sustainable Digital Finance Alliance, and DBS Bank. The report was discussed by former DBS CEO Piyush Gupta at Davos and explored the potential of digital technology in transforming how organizations tackle sustainable development. That, in combination with the blockchain and machine learning technology we had been developing and studying at Global Mangrove Trust eventually sparked the interest of an old friend of mine, Mathias Boissonot.
Mathias Boissonot, Ryan Merrill, and I - Handprint Founders
At the start of 2020, Matthias, Ryan, and I had co-founded Handprint Tech, a digital tech company that sought to transform how businesses capture value from the creation of positive impact in the world. Initially focusing on mangroves and e-commerce, over the years, our scope has expanded to all kinds of UN SDG-aligned impact and broadened to all types of sectors, with a specific focus on banking, loyalty, and fintech.
Wedding Day with my beloved, Anna
In December 2020, I married the love of my life Anna in the midst of the Covid pandemic on a boat in Singapore. For us it was a special day of course and for all our friends, it was the biggest party of 2020.
Theo and Mia are a few months old here
In 2021, our children Theo and Mia were born on April fools day.