top of page
Strategic Designer
About Me.
I work at the intersection of strategy and execution: where research, stakeholders, and concrete interventions come together. My focus is on circular value chains, sustainable transitions, and innovation inside complex organizations.
I'm currently doing my graduation research for the master Strategic Product Design (TU Delft) in M4H Rotterdam, the city's circular makers district, on area development and the circular economy. Last year I interned as Innovation Lead at the Port of Amsterdam, working on shore power, hydrogen, and public quays. Before that, I did my bachelor's in Industrial Design at TU Eindhoven and a minor at Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship.
I believe in pilots as stepping stones, not endpoints — and I love getting things to actually move.
My portfolio
Welcome to my portfolio. Here you can find a selection of my work and the projects I have completed.
Master Thesis – Governance for Collective Value
For my graduation project I spent 6 months researching how governance can be designed to support bottom-up urban area development. The project takes place in the Keilekwartier, one of five sub-areas of the Merwe-Vierhavens (M4H) in Rotterdam. The Keilekwartier has organically developed into a community of makers, cultural institutions, and socially oriented entrepreneurs, and is now at a critical moment: the Municipality of Rotterdam, the Stichting Keilekwartier, and the Keilecoöperatie are jointly trying to build a governance model that can sustain this community as the area develops further.
I wanted to understand how strategic design can contribute to a domain dominated by policy, real estate, and law. Specifically: how can a designer add value in a context where the actors at the table all share the same ambition but operate from very different constraints, financial logics, and organizational mandates?
Currently in progress — full case study coming soon.
I wanted to understand how strategic design can contribute to a domain dominated by policy, real estate, and law. Specifically: how can a designer add value in a context where the actors at the table all share the same ambition but operate from very different constraints, financial logics, and organizational mandates?
Currently in progress — full case study coming soon.
Port of Amsterdam - Internship
Six months at one of Europe's largest ports, a central player in the Dutch energy transition. I joined to understand how strategic design works inside a large, regulated organization, and where I could add value in a multidisciplinary environment.
I worked across two teams: Explore & Go (internal innovation, validating new ideas and building innovation culture) and Products & Services (commercial processes and stakeholder relationships through an outside-in approach).
Five projects, one thread: from exploration to implementation
🔹 Shore Power (Walstroom).
Ships at the city quays can connect to shore power instead of running diesel engines, but responsibilities across port, grid operator, supplier, and ship were unclear. I mapped the service chain and identified bottlenecks in responsibility.
Result: concrete recommendations incorporated into the new service agreement.
🔹 Hydrogen.
whether a hydrogen test center at the Port of Amsterdam could accelerate the port's hydrogen ecosystem. To structure the question, I built an assumption map of eight critical themes (ownership, technical feasibility, financial model, risks, market need, showcase value, certification, and ecosystem function) and validated each with key players in the field, including TNO, Shell ETCA, Battolyser, Hynetwork, and Groenvermogen.
Result: a substantiated advisory report that informed the port's next steps and shifted the conversation toward broader sustainable fuels.
🔹 Public Quays (Openbare Kades).
The port's public quays are underused, despite a major investment in their renewal. The question shifted from how do we maintain them? to what else could they be for? I developed scenarios for new propositions and helped test them through pilots.
Result: two pilots set up and monitored on real quays.
🔹 Shore Leave (Walverlof).
Ship crews can spend up to nine months at sea, and even when they finally dock, many are unable to set foot on land. ISPS security regulations and operational barriers at terminals often keep them on board, a problem increasingly visible in the news as a question of basic crew welfare. The topic has reached the political agenda: parliamentary questions have been raised, and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (IenW) has actively engaged on the issue. I analyzed these barriers and the role the port can play in facilitating access.
Result: a report with concrete interventions and pilots.
RPA cases & AI
Alongside the strategic projects, I worked on bringing AI and automation into the port's daily operations. I designed and ran an internal AI workshop to help colleagues identify where the technology could add value in their own work, and built RPA solutions in Power Automate to automate repetitive internal processes.
Result: working automations in use across teams, and a more confident, hands-on relationship with AI inside the organization.
I worked across two teams: Explore & Go (internal innovation, validating new ideas and building innovation culture) and Products & Services (commercial processes and stakeholder relationships through an outside-in approach).
Five projects, one thread: from exploration to implementation
🔹 Shore Power (Walstroom).
Ships at the city quays can connect to shore power instead of running diesel engines, but responsibilities across port, grid operator, supplier, and ship were unclear. I mapped the service chain and identified bottlenecks in responsibility.
Result: concrete recommendations incorporated into the new service agreement.
🔹 Hydrogen.
whether a hydrogen test center at the Port of Amsterdam could accelerate the port's hydrogen ecosystem. To structure the question, I built an assumption map of eight critical themes (ownership, technical feasibility, financial model, risks, market need, showcase value, certification, and ecosystem function) and validated each with key players in the field, including TNO, Shell ETCA, Battolyser, Hynetwork, and Groenvermogen.
Result: a substantiated advisory report that informed the port's next steps and shifted the conversation toward broader sustainable fuels.
🔹 Public Quays (Openbare Kades).
The port's public quays are underused, despite a major investment in their renewal. The question shifted from how do we maintain them? to what else could they be for? I developed scenarios for new propositions and helped test them through pilots.
Result: two pilots set up and monitored on real quays.
🔹 Shore Leave (Walverlof).
Ship crews can spend up to nine months at sea, and even when they finally dock, many are unable to set foot on land. ISPS security regulations and operational barriers at terminals often keep them on board, a problem increasingly visible in the news as a question of basic crew welfare. The topic has reached the political agenda: parliamentary questions have been raised, and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management (IenW) has actively engaged on the issue. I analyzed these barriers and the role the port can play in facilitating access.
Result: a report with concrete interventions and pilots.
RPA cases & AI
Alongside the strategic projects, I worked on bringing AI and automation into the port's daily operations. I designed and ran an internal AI workshop to help colleagues identify where the technology could add value in their own work, and built RPA solutions in Power Automate to automate repetitive internal processes.
Result: working automations in use across teams, and a more confident, hands-on relationship with AI inside the organization.
FREITAG — Strategic Transformation Plan
FREITAG is a Swiss brand built on circular production: bags made from recycled truck tarpaulins, seatbelts, and bicycle inner tubes. Iconic, but operating in a market where scarce materials, rising costs, fast-fashion competitors claiming sustainability, and a holacratic structure that slows cross-team decisions all push at the same time.
We developed a strategic transformation plan to help FREITAG hold its position as a leader in sustainable fashion. The plan rests on three connected shifts: leadership and change management, digital transformation, and ecosystem collaboration across the value chain.
🔹 Three horizons
▪️ Digital Change Leaders. Embedding leaders within FREITAG's existing circles to bridge traditional craftsmanship and digital tools, addressing the accountability gaps that come with self-managed structures.
▪️AI Material Sourcing. Using AI and blockchain to accelerate the search for scarce tarpaulin materials and broaden the material portfolio, freeing FREITAG from a supply chain bottleneck that today depends on individual "truck spotters."
▪️ Co-creation F-ederation. Expanding FREITAG's existing loyalty program into a co-creation platform where customers, designers, and repair partners collaborate, turning customers into active participants in the circular system.
▪️ What this project taught me
A circular brand can't stand still. Even leaders need to keep redesigning the system around them, especially when growth and sustainability have to move forward together. The interesting strategic question for FREITAG wasn't how to be more sustainable, but how to keep its circular model viable as it scales, and that turned out to be a question about people, partners, and technology as much as about products.
The core argument: a circular brand can't stand still. Even leaders need to keep redesigning the system around them, especially when growth and sustainability have to move forward together.
We developed a strategic transformation plan to help FREITAG hold its position as a leader in sustainable fashion. The plan rests on three connected shifts: leadership and change management, digital transformation, and ecosystem collaboration across the value chain.
🔹 Three horizons
▪️ Digital Change Leaders. Embedding leaders within FREITAG's existing circles to bridge traditional craftsmanship and digital tools, addressing the accountability gaps that come with self-managed structures.
▪️AI Material Sourcing. Using AI and blockchain to accelerate the search for scarce tarpaulin materials and broaden the material portfolio, freeing FREITAG from a supply chain bottleneck that today depends on individual "truck spotters."
▪️ Co-creation F-ederation. Expanding FREITAG's existing loyalty program into a co-creation platform where customers, designers, and repair partners collaborate, turning customers into active participants in the circular system.
▪️ What this project taught me
A circular brand can't stand still. Even leaders need to keep redesigning the system around them, especially when growth and sustainability have to move forward together. The interesting strategic question for FREITAG wasn't how to be more sustainable, but how to keep its circular model viable as it scales, and that turned out to be a question about people, partners, and technology as much as about products.
The core argument: a circular brand can't stand still. Even leaders need to keep redesigning the system around them, especially when growth and sustainability have to move forward together.
Will You Still Look Away? — Fast Fashion Exhibition
An exhibition about the hidden impact of the fast fashion industry. Visitors peek through small openings in everyday garments and uncover what's behind them: pollution, overproduction, exploitation. A final mirror turns the question back on the viewer.
Will you still look away?
The piece was exhibited at Dutch Design Week 2025 (Klokgebouw, Eindhoven) as part of the 4TU Design United Expo, under the theme Less Hope, More Action!
Team: Britt Klap, Olga Bogaerts, Sabarna Senathirajan, and Valérie Klemann (TU Delft).
IO Festival 2025 — Secretary & Acquisition
Every year, the largest student festival at TU Delft is organized entirely by students, for students. In 2025, I'm part of the IO Festival board as Secretary and Acquisition Coordinator. As Secretary, I keep the board running: internal communication, documentation, and the structure that lets a volunteer team make decisions fast. As Acquisition Coordinator, I bring in the partnerships and sponsorships that make the festival financially possible, from first contact to signed agreement. It's the kind of role where strategy meets execution: thinking about what partners we want and why, and then actually getting them on board.
Dienst Justitiële Inrichtingen — A 15-Year Vision for Dutch Detention
Dutch detention is under pressure: chronic staff shortages, persistent recidivism, and a system that has to deliver both justice and rehabilitation at the same time. For the Dienst Justitiële Inrichtingen (DJI), the question is no longer how to manage today, but how to stay viable fifteen years from now. At Justitieel Complex Zaanstad, our team developed a strategic framework for the long term: a model that holds justice and rehabilitation in balance, while staying adaptable to social, technological, and environmental shifts. We worked through a structured, multi-method design process, combining research, scenario thinking, and co-creation with people inside the system.
The outcome was a set of adaptable directions for DJI to act on now, rather than a single fixed plan, because the only certainty across fifteen years is that the context will keep moving.
The outcome was a set of adaptable directions for DJI to act on now, rather than a single fixed plan, because the only certainty across fifteen years is that the context will keep moving.
Adidas x Next Gen Subculture — A Future Vision
Gen Z is rewriting what fashion is for. They want flexibility over ownership, self-expression over uniformity, and sustainability as a baseline rather than a feature. For Adidas, that shift isn't a marketing question, it's a model question.
I developed a future vision for Adidas built around these tensions: a shared wardrobe concept where users rent clothing instead of buying it. The idea cuts overconsumption at the source, while giving Gen Z exactly what they want: access to variety without the weight of ownership. The vision repositions Adidas from a product brand to a service brand, where the value is no longer in what you sell, but in how long the same piece keeps moving through different hands.
I developed a future vision for Adidas built around these tensions: a shared wardrobe concept where users rent clothing instead of buying it. The idea cuts overconsumption at the source, while giving Gen Z exactly what they want: access to variety without the weight of ownership. The vision repositions Adidas from a product brand to a service brand, where the value is no longer in what you sell, but in how long the same piece keeps moving through different hands.
sPark — Reactivating Stratumseind
Eindhoven's identity is tightly linked to Stratumseind, the city's iconic bar street. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the street has gone quiet, and that emptiness has started to affect how the city feels as a whole. sPark is our answer: a multifunctional water park that brings movement back to the area. It combines a water channel, a fountain, an interactive labyrinth, and greenery into one continuous space, designed to draw people in and connect Stratumseind back to the city center. The goal is not to replace the nightlife, but to give the street a second life during the day. By layering new functions onto an existing place, sPark adds energy without erasing the identity that made Stratumseind matter in the first place.
To make the concept tangible, we built a full 3D model of the area in Blender and Unity, allowing us to walk through the redesigned street and test how the spatial flow, sightlines, and interactions actually feel from a visitor's perspective.
To make the concept tangible, we built a full 3D model of the area in Blender and Unity, allowing us to walk through the redesigned street and test how the spatial flow, sightlines, and interactions actually feel from a visitor's perspective.
Lucid — Chair & Lustrum Commissioner
A full-time board year at Lucid, the Industrial Design study association at TU Eindhoven, in two roles: Chair of the board and Commissioner of the Lustrum (the association's five-year anniversary).
As Chair, I led a multidisciplinary team and held the line between strategic decisions and the daily operations that keep an association running. As Lustrum Commissioner, I worked on large-scale events and long-term planning, managing relationships with sponsors, faculty, and external partners along the way. The year sharpened the things I rely on now: leading a team without leaning on hierarchy, communicating clearly across very different audiences, and structuring projects that have a lot of moving parts.
As Chair, I led a multidisciplinary team and held the line between strategic decisions and the daily operations that keep an association running. As Lustrum Commissioner, I worked on large-scale events and long-term planning, managing relationships with sponsors, faculty, and external partners along the way. The year sharpened the things I rely on now: leading a team without leaning on hierarchy, communicating clearly across very different audiences, and structuring projects that have a lot of moving parts.
What is Normal?! — A Tool for Open Conversations in Schools
Youth care in the Netherlands has been under pressure for decades, and the consequences are visible: more young people, with heavier mental health issues, reaching the system later than they should. Schools sit close to the problem but rarely have the language for it. Topics like mental health and addiction barely show up in the curriculum. In collaboration with Garage 2020, I developed What is Normal?!, a tool that helps high school students open up conversations about exactly these topics. It was co-created with youth care experts, educators, and policymakers, so it works in the reality of a classroom rather than against it.
The goal is simple: shift care from reactive to preventive by giving young people, and the adults around them, a starting point for talking about what's actually going on.
The goal is simple: shift care from reactive to preventive by giving young people, and the adults around them, a starting point for talking about what's actually going on.
ANWB Energie — Repositioning & Launch Strategy
ANWB is a brand built on trust, but trust alone wasn't enough to launch a new dynamic energy contract in a crowded market. Together with my team, I developed a repositioning and launch strategy for ANWB Energie that gave the sub-brand its own voice without breaking the parent brand's promise. We combined internal and external analyses, customer interviews, and brand research to map where ANWB Energie could credibly stand. The outcome was a refreshed brand DNA that pairs the trust ANWB is known for with a sense of excitement around what energy can become.
Captured in one line: "Energy you trust, experiences that excite."
The campaign targets urban audiences and emphasizes self-empowerment, reliability, and financial benefits in their energy choices.
Captured in one line: "Energy you trust, experiences that excite."
The campaign targets urban audiences and emphasizes self-empowerment, reliability, and financial benefits in their energy choices.
Diepzinnig - Podcast on Brand & Storytelling
Diepzinnig is a podcast that makes complex topics accessible without losing their depth. For this individual project I produced an episode focused on brand and storytelling: how brands use narrative to build meaning, and how storytelling shapes the way audiences connect with them.
I handled the full production myself, from concept and research to recording, editing, and publishing on SoundCloud. The challenge was to keep the content sharp and substantive while staying engaging for a listener audience that ranges from students to professionals. The format pushed me to think about strategy in a different medium: instead of slides or reports, I had to translate ideas into a spoken narrative that holds attention from start to finish.
I handled the full production myself, from concept and research to recording, editing, and publishing on SoundCloud. The challenge was to keep the content sharp and substantive while staying engaging for a listener audience that ranges from students to professionals. The format pushed me to think about strategy in a different medium: instead of slides or reports, I had to translate ideas into a spoken narrative that holds attention from start to finish.
bottom of page