Arie van Beek

Background

About Arie van Beek

To contribute to the energy turnaround and preventing global warming as much as possible while still having fun is my mission. Here’s how: • Serving the public and private sector and building bridges between them: both are key for making the energy turnaround timely, efficiently and cost-effectively. • Strategically from a bird’s eye perspective, but at the same time firmly footed & rooted, connecting to people, building local communities, empowering them to act locally and help building real projects. • Nationally and internationally; building virtual communities across the globe; so enriching to work with “strangers” and “weird” perspectives. • Ecologically and economically sound and future proof. • Learning and lecturing; so much fun and inspiring to learn from others, so much fun to pass new insights & experience to others. Small (hi)story of my life: Grew up in a large family in the Netherlands in the outskirts of Rotterdam. My father, my elder siblings Joost & Janneke made me aware of the environmental challenges Planet Earth were facing. Carson's "Silent Spring", the report for the Club of Rome project "Limits to Growth", Potma's "Forgotten Scenario" lured me professionally into the field of what we call nowadays "sustainability". Started my career as a junior researcher & consultant and gradually climbed the ladder into various managerial positions. Management while still having feet on the ground: knowing from experience what (hardships) it takes to implement real projects. The scope of gradually widened from wind energy through renewable energy to covering all CO2 reduction options. I've always had a keen eye how to improve effectiveness of activities, policies and processes."How to Accelerate the Energy Turnaround" was my graduation topic in the Executive Change Management studies I took up lately. Process is key for successful changes, obviously, and it better be driven by the issues at hand.