Now a pitch coach, I have been a lieutenant-colonel with the Royal Netherlands Air Force for 20 years, with a 7 year posting as a assistant-professor in Defence Economics and Logistics at the Netherlands Defence Academy.

On 9/11/2014 (not coincidental!) I obtained my doctorate at the Erasmus University Rotterdam on a cross-cultural PhD study into books soldier-authors write about their experiences in Afghanistan (available on this site). I researched all 54 books that were published between 2001-2010 in the US, UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada, to see who these military writers are, what they write about, and why they write.

My interest in this subject stems from the fact that I wrote a non-fiction book about my own experiences: Officier in Afghanistan (Meulenhoff, 2012).

I read Business Administration at Erasmus University Rotterdam and I'm a sworn interpreter/translator Dutch-English.

Currently,I'm an entrepreneur. I use my scientic knowledge of storytelling to teach people how to pitch. My company is called De Pitchcoach (www.depitchcoach.nl).