CORE TEAM
Tim van Dam, co-founder
Tim van Dam is a social tech entrepreneur and senior business developer coming from the international telecom market. Spending most of his time building wireless sensor networks in remote protected areas and assembling lion tracking collars. With the foundation of Smart Parks, he has dedicated all his attention to developing and deploying state-of-the-art Internet of Things technology to protect wildlife across the globe. With his team at Smart Parks he has introduced LoRaWAN® as the new standard for remote sensing networks in Africa and with the OpenCollar Initiative he has developed a portfolio of open-source advanced wildlife protection technology devices. Since the ElephantEdge Campaign, he is on a mission to implement the latest machine learning for edge devices. In 2018, he received the Tech for Global Good Laureate from the Silicon Valley Museum of Innovation.
Luuk Eikelboom
Luuk has joined the Smart Parks team to lead and coordinate our campaigns in Namibia. Luuk is the owner of CARE Internet Services and has over 25 years of experience with web and web-applications. Visiting Namibia many times over the last decades he fell in love with this stunning country. He did various charitable projects and has been supporting Desert Lion Conservation with knowledge and technology over the past four years. Luuk first joined Smart Parks during our Namibia Desert Lion project in 2019.
EXTENDED TEAM
Laurens de Groot, co-founder
Prior to Smart Parks, Laurens was involved in conservation projects with Sea Shepherd in Africa, Europe and Antarctica. Before Laurens became an environmental campaigner he worked for the Dutch police as an investigator, specialised in organised environmental crime. He is also the co-founder of Skeye, a drone service provider for which he won the Dutch Next Entrepreneur Award.
Jeroen de Looze, co-founder
Jeroen has a proven track record of software- and web development for many large Dutch multinational enterprises.
Ariet Bouman
Ariet is a proficient and enthusiastic researcher. Her fascination with wildlife combined with an academic background in conservation and ecology makes her an all-round addition to the team. As wildlife conservation engineer she works on technical solutions to support community-conservation and wildlife protection.
Friso Modderman
Friso is a multi-talented full stack programmer that helps to bring all the Smart Parks web applications to the next level. Having worked with the Desert Lion project in Namibia for the past years, he has very relevant experience in bringing all data to the right place and views.
Jos Berière
Jos is a veteran in the telecom market, most recently within KPN he has been responsible for the launch of 5G in the business market. Before this he has been responsible in various roles in operations for customer & vendors tenders, customer trials and spectrum auctions & leases. He joined to make a difference to preserve wildlife by enabling 4G/5G solutions.
Steve Roest, co-founder
Steve has worked on environmental and anti-poaching projects across five continents, and has run projects for the provision of, and access to quality education in Northern Uganda and South Sudan.
Peter van Lunteren
Peter is a tech-savvy ecologist with a passion for data science and machine learning. As a wildlife ProTechtor he is committed to developing software to aid conservationists in the field. Currently working on an AI-based species detector for the Desert Lion Conservation project in Namibia.
Developer Community
Krasi Georgiev
Finds real purpose when contributing to projects that use technology for real-world challenges. Dreaming of a NatGeo collaboration and space travel. A strong advocate for open-source technology and decentralization. Addicted to breaking the comfort zone through extreme adventures. Favorite saying: Dream for the clouds and keep your feet on the ground. Check him out here: thesearch.life
Board of Directors Netherlands
Richard van Deventer
Richard is a senior business developer with a solid track record in supporting social technology startups with their mission to create impact on a environmental or humanitarian level.
Luuk Eikelboom
Luuk, mentioned above, has joined the Smart Parks team to lead and coordinate our campaigns in Namibia.
Laurens de Groot, co-founder
Laurens, mentioned above, is involved in the ICFG, a think-and-do-tank for improving societal resilience in relation to exponential technologies and existential risks.
Board of Directors United Kingdom
Harriet Mallinson
Harriet is a global communications and marketing expert including six years at the Financial Times delivering projects and strategic campaigns. She is passionate about conservation and an advocate for search and rescue. Harriet joined Smart Parks as a UK Director at the start.
Paul Green
Paul Green is a commercially focussed CFO who has worked with some of the highest profile companies within the media, marketing and not for profit sectors. Currently CFO for Artefact UK and Group CFO for its marketing services division globally.Paul is currently Treasurer of Malaria no more, an advocacy charity fighting Malaria and has previously been treasurer of World Child Cancer.
Steve Roest
Steve, mentioned above, has worked on environmental and anti-poaching projects across five continents.