The Creative Board

Members of the Creative Board

Walter Amerika, Chairman
Walter Amerika, former Director of the Board of FHV/BBDO Group, is an independent entrepreneur, consultant, a volunteer in creativity and the founder of Progress United, a network of creative entrepreneurs. In addition, he is a creative consultant for De Baak / VNO-NCW and a lecturer at the Design Academy in Eindhoven. He has also earned acclaim for creating a sofa for the creative industry, known as the Creative Industry Sofa. Walter Amerika is also known as a Brand and Marketing specialist.
Walteramerika.blogs.com

Marcel Wanders
Marcel Wanders is an industrial designer. Wanders pursued educational programmes in Arnhem, Maastricht and Hasselt, and is also a cum laude graduate from the Arnhem Art Academy.
His first major breakthrough came in 1996 in the form of the ‘Knotted Chair’; a chair made of reinforced rope that he designed (in collaboration with the Technische Universiteit Delft) for Droog Design. He is a co-owner and art director of the design agency, Moooi (formerly Wanders Wonders) in Amsterdam. Wanders also runs his own furniture design agency that designs products for a number of Italian furniture brands. In 2002, Wanders appeared in the Top 50 Stars of Europe list of the American magazine, Business Week. In 2005, Wanders served as editor of the Design Yearbook and, also in 2005, he won a prize for the ‘Carbon Chair’ in the Elle Decoration International Design Awards and, in 2006, he won the Designer of the Year award in the Elle Decoration International Design Awards competition. Wanders’ work can be seen in MoMa, as well as in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam and the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, among others.
www.marcelwanders.nl

Piet Boon
Piet Boon is an acclaimed furniture and interior designer. Boon and his wife, Karin, own a design studio with a team of architects and designers. His main strength is the design of ‘total concepts’, both for private individuals and for companies, such as for project developers. In addition, Boon also designs and develops new products for third parties. As a designer, Piet Boon prefers projects in which he can become engaged in every facet of the design process. The principal point of departure for all his designs (in addition to being well thought through from a design perspective) is that they must be timeless and durable. The distinctive leitmotivs that run through all his work are the pure, authentic, and natural materials that he loves to work with and his unabashedly expressive use of colour. Basically, the Piet Boon style is chic with due attention to comfort and detail. His clear and unique design style has an international image that has earned him a name as one of the most talked about Dutch designers in the world.
Although Piet Boon started out as a house and interior designer, he has meanwhile made a name for himself as a multifaceted designer of public spaces, beach houses on the island of Bonaire, mansions all over the world, a limited edition of a Range Rover Sport, a water bottle for Sourcy, and the first non-casino hotel in Las Vegas for The Morgans Hotel Group.
In 2003, he launched a highly successful furniture and lighting range under his own name and, in 2006, he also added an upholstery fabric line to the brand. Also in 2006, he won the coveted Dutch Woonbeurs Pin, an interior design award presented by Woonbeurs Amsterdam once a year.
www.pietboon.nl

Frans Jansen
The core of Frans Jansen’s oeuvre consists of an extensive archive of private photographic recordings: He has been photographing everything around him since the age of sixteen; whereby birds, women and the sea feature as his favourite subjects. Jansen photographs to stay alive: Some of his photographs are made on commission, while others are more personal. It is however hard, in his case, to draw a clear line of distinction between ‘private’ and ‘professional’. All of his photographs that were produced on commission also have an element of randomness about them, as a result of which his photographs always have a natural and intimate quality about them. Frans Jansen already started to produce photographs for the Fooks fashion chain and for Avenue magazine while studying at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. Later on, he also took portraits of musicians for the Dutch music magazine, Oor. In addition, he also made portraits of the captains of industry for the Dutch business journal, Quote. Jansen’s oeuvre of work also includes numerous advertising campaigns, including for Audi, Nike, Rabobank, Grolsch and the insurance company, Zwitserleven. Frans Jansen is, however, only interested in the quality of his most recent work. He does not like to define himself in reference to other heavyweights. Jansen sees no difference between commissioned jobs for advertising agencies and any other type of principal. Jansen: “Advertising agencies and all other commercial principals are the modern patrons of the arts. Rembrandt, Rubens and Michelangelo all did advertising; only, they did it for the Church, the aristocracy and the army.”
www.fransjansen.com

Jan Willem Sieburgh
Jan Willem Sieburgh is the Commercial Director of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Prior to that, he served as the director of various other advertising agencies, in which capacity he was also involved in the association of Dutch designers. One of Sieburgh’s main passions is to ensure that our cultural heritage is also made available in digital form.
www.rijksmuseum.nl

Caroline Bos
Caroline Bos studied art history at London University’s Birkbeck College. In 1988, after working for well-known architects, Zaha Hadid and Santiago Calatrava, for a short period of time, the art historian partnered with architect Ben van Berkel to form the architect’s firm, Van Berkel en Bos Architectenbureau. The new firm realized a number of striking projects in the city of Amersfoort, but made its name with the design of the famous Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam.
In 1998, the partners changed the firm’s name to UN Studio, whereby ‘UN’ represents United Network. The firm operates as a network of specialists in the fields of architecture, infrastructure and urban design. UN Studio has attracted numerous award-winning projects in the United States, New Zealand and Germany. Caroline Bos is also the chairperson of the Sikkens Foundation, an independent organisation that stimulates social, cultural and scientific developments in society in which colour, as a medium, plays an important role.
www.unstudio.com

Michel Mol
Michel Mol is the Director of Innovation and New Media at the Dutch public broadcasting services, the NPO (for Nederlandse Publieke Omroep). Prior to that he was a Management Consultant at McKinsey&Company until 2001, Director Interactive at Grey Communications Group, and an independent entrepreneur. Mol is responsible for the development and implementation of the broader innovation strategy at the NPO. His assignment is to promote the ‘future-proofness’ of the public broadcasters by creating cross-relationships between the existing platform operations of television, radio and the Internet. In addition, he is also expected to launch new services on new platforms, such as Video on Demand and mobile service, as well as for developing the related models and alliances.
www.omroep.nl

Joke Hoolboom
Joke Hoolboom studied at the Amsterdam Theatre College (Toneelschool van Amsterdam) and subsequently worked at Appel and Hollandi, among other employers. While still studying, she performed in Mozart’s Don Giovanni under Jan Willem de Vriend in his first job as a conductor of opera. That special project laid the seed for Joke’s subsequent interest in, and love for the opera. Since 1995, she has been the artistic leader and permanent director of Xynix Opera (XX).
In addition to more than 20 youth operas in the theatre, she also realized a number of special location projects with the opera company, including Dido and Aeneas at Fort Rijnauwen, Orpheo (Monteverdi) in a functioning concrete factory, and Styx (Chiel Meijering) in the Veerensmederij in Amersfoort. At the beginning of 2009, the latter industrial monument will become the permanent home of XX and thereby also the first youth opera house in Europe.
Joke also directed the following works for the Amsterdam Bach Consort (ABC): King Arthur (Purcell), Idomeneo (Mozart) and Acis & Galatea (Händel), and, in 2006, Mavra (Stravinski) for Opera Zuid. Future projects include The Tempest (Purcell) at the ABC, De Kleine Kerstman (Toek Numan) in a series produced by the Concertgebouw and De Doelen, and King Arthur (Purcell) on location.
www.xynixopera.nl

Gemma Jelier
Gemma Jelier is the Commercial Director of Springdance. Before that, she was the Commercial Director of Huis en Festival a/d Werf for two years, and prior to that she worked as Commercial Director of Festival ETCETERA in Amersfoort and the Impakt Festival in Utrecht.
After completing her education in Theatre, Film and Television Sciences at Utrecht University, Jelier started her career as a production manager at Naranti Productions in Amsterdam, a production company for emerging young choreographers. At the end of the nineties, she worked as a producer in Jansen & Jelier, and also acted as a talent scout and agent for talented young theatre producers for a few years. Gemma Jelier is a member of the Board of Dance Unit (Amsterdam).
www.springdance.nl

Richard van der Giessen
Richard van der Giessen is the director of U-TRAX, a company that was founded as a record label in 1992. Since 1997, U-TRAX has also been providing localization and advertising services to the video games industry.
www.utrax.nl