John van Duursen, born 1971. Married and father of a son and a baby girl.
(M)BA degrees in International Business and Environmental Management.
I started my first company in 1994 and held it for 4 years. I have worked as a painter in Australia, as an international consultant and as an account manager for multinationals prior to moving into the development space. I was engaged in several projects concerning nature conservation and eco-tourism in Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala. In 2003, Derk Norde and I initiated research on sustainability in the cocoa supply chain (mainstream) in Ghana and co-founded Fair Ventures.
As a co-founder and director of the Business in Development (BiD) Foundation, I unite my commercial, business- and entrepreneurial personality with a passion and ambition for sustainable business creation in developing countries. Within the BiD Network, I had responsibilities on managing our partners, the roll-out of the BiD Model to other countries and commercial developments. In 2008, I launched the first so-called 'sector challenge' with WWF to identify and support nature based businesses benefiting local communities. See the Nature Challenge.
I have left BiD Network in 2009 to focus on the protection / improvement of ecosystems through business;
- a pipeline of innovative business approaches to serve ecosystems
- running www.thenaturechallenge.org
- several studies, project implementation and consultancies on 'payment for environmental services', 'sustainable supply chain management' and the mobilization of 'finance for biodiversity'.
"You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it"
Geluk,
John
