As a nine-year-old boy, I was already concerned about decisions affecting other people. Fantasizing about building a castle that provided the right living conditions and the protection people deserved, I could not guess this interest would become such a defining factor for my educational and professional career as it has been up to today.
After obtaining my master's degree in political sciences, I had the chance to get acquainted with political practice from the privileged position I held as staff member of a political youth organisation. I realized that my contribution to society would rather consist in providing the data to inform policy decisions than in the political decision-making itself.
During almost 12 years at a privately owned research agency, I was lucky to do exactly that.
I provided practical advice on specific policy questions, based on research.
In doing so, I studied issues in the fields of education, labour market and social policy and rendered services for a broad range of governmental authorities and non-profit organisations active in these domains.
The diverse nature of the research projects I was responsible for trained me in designing the right approach for each specific question and gave me the chance to develop advanced skills in quantitative as well as in qualitative research techniques.
In recent years, I particularly enjoyed the skills forecasts I conducted for various industries. Looking forward to the future, assessing the impact of new strategies and technologies on people, I was also urged to reflect on the future of social sciences.
At the same time, an old fascination of mine for Artificial Intelligence - once triggered by the reading of ‘Gödel, Esscher, Bach’ - was renewed by the growing datafication of our society. People and organisations, willingly and unwillingly, increasingly leave a digital trail telling us what they do and think.
As I had always been inclined to use technology in order to support my research activities, all these elements currently culminate into my current startup company.
My ambition is to keep answering the same type of societal relevant questions. But rather than relying only on the traditional methods that are used in social sciences to collect and analyse data, I want to use the opportunities that new technologies offer to a larger extent. In particular, I want to bridge the gap between data scientists coding the tools to collect and process data, and the societal stakeholders and decision-makers looking for insight. As such, I’m looking forward to help both technology providers and the authorities and organisations active in the fields of education, labour and social policy to have lager impact, by enabling them to make informed choices.
