Speakers and board members

Elsemiek Meijs

Coach and counselor in organisations, TU Alumna and a member of the Delft Female Impact Community 

Elsemiek Meijs is an independent coach, facilitator and counselor for people in organizations. She coaches individuals and teams on issues of leadership, growth and development, collaboration, and communication. She helps leaders to take ownership of their own story. About where they come from, what drives them, where their vulnerabilities and pain are, what patterns they have learned to live by. With that story, they can more easily connect with others, be a secure base for others and make more authentic choices. She will often make a “turn around the corner": by looking not only at the behavior of the individual or team, but also at the dynamics of the systems where this happens.To engage in better conversations with a group, she uses film clips: they inspire and lead to awareness at a deeper level.

Elsemiek originally trained as a computer science engineer at TU Delft and worked for many years as a manager in the business world. 

Meer at www.elsemiekmeijscoaching.nl and www.filmlezingen.nl and  www.linkedin.com/in/elsemiekmeijs/ 

Esther Mollema

A renowned speaker and leader in inclusive leadership development, as one of our distinguished guests. 
With her practically applicable knowledge, humour and experience, Esther Mollema is a much sought-after consultant and speaker. She travels the world to gather and share her insights on successful entrepreneurship, High Performance Organisations (HPO), Inclusion & Diversity and Unconscious Bias.

Esther believes that the power of organisations lies in the individual differences between employees. She teaches you how to use diversity and inclusion for better financial and strategic results. 

Esther has now published four books on High Performance, Unconscious Bias and Inclusion. TheNextWomen has recognised Esther as one of the hundred most successful and influential female entrepreneurs in the Netherlands. 

Irene Grossmann

Assistant Professor Safety in Healthcare at the TU Delft and co-founder of Institute for Health Systems Science 
Irene Grossmann is a medical doctor and surgeon and since June 2021 also assistant professor in Safety in Healthcare in Delft. Her main goal is to improve the safety of care, mainly using the available knowledge and experience from other domains and sciences, and ‘translating’ these to the health & care domain. Through her dual position both in Delft and in the medical world (at the emergency care in Deventer), she specifically looks at how to ‘close the gap’ between these worlds. Together with 3 close companions, she recently established the Institute for Health Systems Science at TPM faculty, where she is the director of education. 

Jose Rueda Torres

Associate Professor in the Electrical Sustainable Energy Department at the TU Delft and involved in the EU-project FEMPower 
José Luis Rueda Torres is currently an Associate Professor leading the research team on Dynamic Stability of Sustainable Electrical Power Systems, within the Intelligent Electrical Power Grids Section, Electrical Sustainable Energy Department, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands. His research interests include stability and control of elecrical power systems and multi-energy systems, electrical power system operational planning & reliability, and probabilistic and artificial intelligence methods. Currently, he is member of the Technical Committee on Power and Energy Systems of IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control), Chairman of the IEEE PES Working Group on Modern Heuristic Optimization, Secretary of CIGRE JWG C4/C2.58/IEEE “Evaluation of Voltage Stability Assessment Methodologies in Transmission Systems”, Vice-chair of the IEEE PES Intelligent Systems Subcommittee, and Vice-Chair of the IFAC Technical Committee TC 6.3. Power and Energy Systems on Social Media. 

He received the Electrical Engineer Diploma from Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Quito, Ecuador, with cum laude honors in August 2004. From September 2003 till February 2005, he worked in Ecuador, in the fields of industrial control systems and electrical distribution networks operation and planning. In November 2009, he received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the National University of San Juan, obtaining the highest mark ‘Sobresaliente’ (Outstanding). Between August 2010 and February 2014, he worked as a postdoctoral research associate at EAN. 

Marien van der Meer

Since August 1st 2021, drs. Marien van der Meer is the Vice President Operations/member of the Executive Board.
Marien van der Meer studied public administration at Leiden University. She has extensive experience in complex professional organisations, the last ten years of which she spent as a director. The past five years this was at Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the hospital and research institute that specialises in cancer. She has contributed to future-proof management, was a member of the Organisation for European Cancer Institutes and of the Amsterdam AI coalition. Before that, she was chairperson of the Board of Directors of Sophia Rehabilitation centre in The Hague and Delft, where she helped to prepare for the merger with Leiden to create the current Basalt organisation, in addition to the realisation of the new build of the main facility.

Puck Wijnia

Project leader of the Sustainability Team of the TU Delft. 
 Hi everyone, my name is Puck Wijnia and I'm currently the Project leader of the Sustainability Team of TU Delft. I have a background in Nanobiology (BSc) and Industrial Ecology (MSc) and have been involved in student initiatives such as GreenTU, Students4Sustainability, and Engineers4Refugees. I have always been surrounded by powerful women, that support me and bring out the best in me. I believe we as women can be the change agents needed in especially our fight against climate change. I can't wait to tell you more about it on the 8th of March! See you then. 

Ralien Bekkers

Climate activist and writer of the book ‘Zo kan het niet langer‘ (‘It can’t go on like this’) 
Ralien Bekkers is the author of 'Zo kan het niet langer: Tijd voor vrouwen om de klimaatcrisis op te lossen' (translated: 'We can't go on like this: Time for women to solve the climate crisis' (2023), a book about the role of women's leadership and gender equality in tackling climate change. During the past decade she worked and studied among others in the United States (Yale University) and United Kingdom (SOAS University of London), including at the international climate organization NDC Partnership, which supports countries with implementing their national climate plans under the Paris Climate Agreement. She previously worked among others at the United Nations, engaging closely in the negotiations for the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In 2023, she returned to the Netherlands for the publication of her first book and to join the Dutch Ministry of Finance to lead their international climate work, in particular as Co-Chair of the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action.  

Sarah Giest

Professor Public Policy with a focus on Innovation and Sustainability  
Sarah Giest is a Professor of Public Policy with a focus on Innovation and Sustainability at the Public Administration Institute of Leiden University. She has been developing an interdisciplinary research agenda and courses for technical, environmental and social solutions that shape sustainable societies through a policy lens. Sarah serves as the Vice-President of the International Public Policy Association and chairs the Area 1 Committee at the Data & Policy Journal, focusing on Data-driven Transformations in Policy and Governance . Sarah's expertise is widely acknowledged by international institutions, including the UN, the OECD, and the European Commission. 

Sarah served as the Chair of the Young Academy Leiden, a select group of young academics at Leiden University, which serves as a platform to bring young, enthusiastic and driven early career (post-PhD) academics together. Since January 2024, Sarah is a board member of the Dutch Network of Women Professors (LNVH). In these roles, Sarah actively engages with the challenges encountered by early-career researchers, contributing to both local university dialogues and broader international discussions.  

Vera Popovic

Dr. Vera Popovich, Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at the TU Delft 
Dr. Vera Popovich is an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), Mechanical Engineering Faculty of TUDelft. She is leading the section “Extreme Materials and Mechanics”,  a coordinator of High-Tech Systems and Materials Platform and a chair of Visibility & Communication committee. The mission of Popovich’s research group is to gain fundamental knowledge of failure mechanisms in materials under extreme conditions and to develop advanced materials pushing boundaries of standard applications. Her section has built up a state-of-the-art mechanical behaviour laboratory with advanced manufacturing research infrastructure including top-notch fracture and fatigue equipment for harsh environments and novel additive manufacturing facilities. 

Zofia Lukszo

Professor of Smart Energy Systems and DEWIS Chair at the TU Delft 
My research concentrates on a wide range of problems in the way energy infrastructures are functioning today, and aims at developing new, intelligent concepts for modelling, optimization and control of their operation resulting in more effective, efficient, safe and reliable utilization. In the last two years the research shifted from general interest in operation of infrastructures into future energy systems, and smart grids in particular. Smart grid, widely considered to be an essential improvement of the electricity system that will aid in integrating renewable energy, facilitating the adoption of electric vehicles and providing superior energy services to consumers, is an important part in my research now.