Chartered accountant. Builder. And surfer.
I spent enough years checking other people’s numbers to know where they break. These days I make sure it doesn’t get that far.
How I ended up here
I started at EY, working on one of the first audits to use the data analytics programme. Instead of sampling a hundred entries, we looked at all of them at once. That stuck with me: if the data is there anyway, why look at a fraction of it?
After that I built a Sarbanes-Oxley control framework at Sator, mostly at newly acquired units. At Blaak & Breederveld I spent four years auditing SME accounts end to end. You learn quickly where numbers give way in practice: not inside the spreadsheet, but at the point where two systems don’t know about each other.
At Home of People I saw up close what growth does to an organisation. Revenue went from €70M to €150M, partly through acquisitions, and I rolled out the budget cycle across five business units. It became obvious there that reporting assembled by hand simply stops keeping up at some point. Not because people are too slow, but because the work is too repetitive.
That is exactly where I focus now. I sharpen the goals, build the controls that hold the numbers up, and automate the manual work away. What I deliver has to work without me. If I’m indispensable after six months, I built the wrong thing.
Background
- Since 2025 · independent
Business controller and BI consultant
Business control with an emphasis on budgeting, and dashboards I build end to end: from the ledger in Exact Online through to the report in Power BI. Alongside that, financial control at mid to large B2B services companies, hands on the controls: automating processes, making corrections, putting checks in place and coaching colleagues as it runs.
- 2023 – 2025 · Home of People
Business controller and ESG reporter
Rolled out the budget cycle to two existing and three newly acquired business units while revenue went from €70M to €150M. Implemented Power BI and developed the front end further, bringing financial and operational data across all units into one view. Alongside that, internal controls for back office and finance, and the implementation of ESG and CSRD reporting.
- 2019 – 2022 · Blaak & Breederveld
Auditor
The full financial statement audit, from planning through to conclusion, for a varied portfolio of SME clients. Four years there gets you inside more sets of books than a decade elsewhere.
- 2018 – 2019 · Sator Holding
Risk and internal control analyst
Designed and implemented an internal control framework meeting Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, mainly at newly acquired business units.
- 2016 – 2018 · EY
Staff audit
Financial statement audits at both small and listed companies, including one of the first applications of the data analytics audit programme. That is where I came to prefer putting the data to work over pulling samples.
- Education
BSc Business Administration, MSc Accounting & Financial Management, RA
Bachelor and master at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, followed by the post-master qualification as a Dutch chartered accountant at the Erasmus Institute of Business Economics. Not because I want to keep auditing annual accounts, but because the profession teaches you where numbers give way.
What I watch for
Understand first, build second
A script that automates the wrong process is just faster at being wrong. I start with the process and the question behind it.
Auditable over clever
Everything I build has to be checkable by someone else. That’s the auditor in me, and it makes handover far easier.
The team has to take it over
I deliver documentation and train people to work with it. Without that, the improvement stops the day I leave.
Say what I see
Including when that means you don’t need a dashboard, you need a different conversation in the management team.
Outside office hours
I work mostly remote, and usually from places where I can get in the water after work. Coliving in Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Indonesia; it varies.
This isn’t a holiday with a laptop. It’s a working rhythm that suits me: concentrated mornings, short afternoons, and a head that measurably works better after a session in the sea. Clients notice little of it, other than that I’m rarely stuck in traffic at nine in the morning.
Feel free to ask for recommendations. I hold strong opinions about waves in November.
In short
- Education
- RA · MSc Accounting & Financial Management · BSc Business Administration
- Clients
- Mid-size B2B services companies
- Focus
- Business control, BI, finance automation
- Tools
- Power BI, Python, SQL, Exact Online, Excel
- Engagement
- Project or interim, mostly remote
- Based in
- Rotterdam, often elsewhere
- Languages
- Dutch, English
What do you want to steer better?
Tell me briefly what you’re running into. I reply within one working day, even when I think someone else is a better fit.