Promoting international understanding and cooperation, by contributing to the rule of law and the international legal order, are central in my career. I worked for inter alia Amnesty International (team manager, 1986-1990), Oxfam Novib (team and project manager, 1990-1996), the Netherlands Helsinki Committee (director, 1996-2009) and the Clingendael Institute (director of corporate staff, 2009-2019). At the Clingendael Institute, I was also temporarily seconded to the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (operations manager, 2017-2019). After being managing partner of Human European Consultancy in 2020, I succeeded Marcel Zwamborn as its director as of 1 January 2021.
I successfully developed, implemented and managed tailor-made projects and programmes in various Central and East European countries (such as Romania, Bulgaria and Czech Republic) and also in the Netherlands and Turkey. The topics of these projects included: professional training on international human rights law and the rule of law for magistrates, lawyers, police, prison staff and probation staff; and capacity building for professional organisations of judges and prosecutors, human rights organisations, a national probation service and training institutes for magistrates. For ICCT, I provided a training on fund-raising (civil society organisation, Indonesia) and did a project evaluation on the implementation of the ‘Rome Memorandum’ of the GCTF (prison service, The Philippines).
In addition, I succeeded in raising funds for them. My counterparts included international organisations, governments, non-governmental organisations and professionals.
A broad knowledge and professional experience in finance, human resources management, institutional reorganisation, institutional capacity building and governance are part of my toolkit.
Yvonne van Leeuwen-Lohde
Project manager and office manager
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I was born in Germany (1982) and since 2000 I live in the Netherlands. After working for several international organisations, I am proud to work for an organisation that focuses on the real important aspects in life such as people-orientation, honesty, sincerity and freedom! It is great to be able to contribute to this!
I joined the team of Human European Consultancy in July 2018 and with all the organisation stands for I feel that I can completely be myself. Being part of this team with an extensive background of experts in the diverse fields of equality, non-discrimination as well and many more, it feels like we are making a difference by sharing the knowledge and information. In my role as project manager for gender equality and non-discrimination (ad-interim), I am responsible for the maintenance of our expert network, the layout of publications, general coordination and administration as well as the organising international seminars and meetings. Being part of this team also includes my role as office manager and taking care of the daily general office challenges. With my people skills and extensive experience in building expert networks, project- and resource planning I get the work done in the most efficient way and with a human touch.
If I am not in the office, I am practicing yoga, reading a book, listening to podcasts, and having fun with my kids. Besides this, I love baking and I'm always looking for new and delicious recipes.
Rebecca van Midden
Office & administration manager/project support
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After years of working as an office manager, mostly for small commercial companies, working for Human European Consultancy feels like I am finally in the right spot. I feel privileged that I now work for a company which is specialized in projects in the fields of human rights, equality and non-discrimination.
I started working at Human European Consultancy in 2015 as an administrative assistant and in 2016 as an office manager. Next to all administrative-and office manager-related tasks, I am responsible for the layout of publications and for the organisation of all the logistics related to the annual seminars/meetings. Besides all this, I am also responsible for the maintenance of all websites and I monitor the corporate identity of the company as well as the multiple networks.
When I am not at the office, I am active for the Party for the Animals in the city where I live. My future aim is to change peoples’ perspective when it comes to animal rights. And my dream is that I am able to witness the inclusion of animal welfare in our Constitution.
In my spare time, I love to go scuba diving, skiing, watching series and do Vinyasa yoga.
Marcel Zwamborn
Research associate
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The running thread in my work is the promotion and protection of international human rights, equal treatment and non-discrimination. As director of HEC until the end of 2020, I have been network manager, project manager and researcher in the projects of HEC in these areas.
I have been involved in various EU wide studies on Equality Bodies, on legislation on violence against women, the right to housing and equality data collection and the development of indicators to measure democracy and human rights. Working as freelance researcher before joining HEC in 2007, I conducted research on promoting human rights in development cooperation and through foreign policy. I also performed many evaluations of human rights projects and programs of partner organisations of Dutch development agencies.
Parallel to that, I was the founding project manager of Equinet – the European network of equality bodies from 2001 – 2008, a secondment as an alternate member of the Dutch Equal Treatment Commission (ETC).
Jos Kösters
