Claudia Nieuwland

What makes me a good advisor or board member is that I operate on both sides of the table, building and running functions inside international and local mid-sized and large corporates, and working with over ten startups. This includes building some of them alongside the founders, but also as an advisor from the outside.

That combination means I don%27t just recommend a strategy. I understand, from direct experience, where plans typically go wrong once they meet daily reality, in a founding team of 3 people or in a company of thousands of employees.

Transformation and commercial growth are key elements throughout my career, and as a COO/CCO I have directly managed HR, sales, marketing, operations and solutions and restructured entire companies. So, on top of strategic insight, I bring operational judgement to a board.

I naturally challenge a CEO or a president of the board constructively but deeply, to avoid wrong decisions and to make sure we understand the topic from all sides.
The companies that benefit most from my input are those at an inflection point rather than steady state: a startup moving to scale up, and therefore needing real operational and commercial discipline without losing speed, or a mid-sized company changing its business model, such as shifting from pure staff augmentation to solutions-led delivery, or from a single market to international expansion across the EU. Or, a company / CEO that doesn%27t necessarily understand why revenue or margins slip; I can help them to structure thought, look at the market… to come to a sound strategy, and if necessary, execute it for or with them.

Multi-stakeholder, services-heavy sectors such as insurance, HR services, IT services and consulting are where I%27ve spent most of my career, so that%27s where my pattern recognition is sharpest, but the common thread is a company in transition that needs someone who has actually executed that kind of change before, not just advised on it in theory.