A little bit about me

Throughout my life and career path I have always been in pursuit of knowledge, growth through collaboration and positive change. People who know me describe me as active, positive, results-driven and sometimes too fast. I have worked and travelled to more than 40 countries in the past 10-15 years actively involved in business, education, culture and more. You can read my Short Bio below.

Short bio

Currently I am combining a CEO position at the Eye Care Foundation based in Amsterdam with continuous project work for the Fonds de dotation de l’ICOM (International Council of Museums), advising at UNESCO World Heritage and teaching at the Amsterdam University of the Arts in the Netherlands as well as in the Presidential program for Ministers of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Russia.

I have degrees in Marketing, Communications, Art History, Management and Business. I also graduated from the Cultural Leadership International program of the British Council 2010-2012. In 2013 I founded and worked on the development of the Amsterdam Museums Foundation. Since 2014 I have established and supervised more than 8 different Museum Academies for the Rostov Kremlin Museum, the Amsterdam Museum, the Aruba Museum, the Altai Museum, the Moscow Russian Zoo and others for staff training and development. I hold a number of board positions such as: chair of the People's University of Amsterdam, chair of the Diamond Museum Amsterdam, ICOM MPR, the Amsterdam Light Festival and trustee of the World Heritage Site of Brest Fortress. I have a substantial amount of publications and hold several advisory positions.

We can communicate freely in Dutch, English and German as well as communicate on advanced level in French and Indonesian. I am currently studying Russian. But most importantly, we can communicate on the language of Education, Culture, Business and Positive change. Thank you for visiting my page.

My core competences

Let me try to distribute my experience as well as my active everyday professional life into 6 main cathegories with at least one particular data supported example to make it more visual.

Education

I have always enjoyed learning but also sharing knowledge. I have 3 Bachelors and 3 Masters degrees, 10+ Certificates and additional courses graduated and over 6500+ lectures, training sessions and seminars in front of 35 000+ participants for the last 10+ years.

Marketing

Generating ideas, turning them into viable projects or products, building marketing strategies and growing them until they reach their potential... and then growing them a little more. One example: The marketing strategy created in collaboration with the Moscow zoo higher management in 2015 increased visiters from 1.9 to 4 million in only 3 years.

Culture

Actively working on cultural projects, especially in the area of collaboration between professionals and institutions to maximize results and growth. The successful collaboration between all Amsterdam museums initiated in 2012 resulted in an increase from 9 to 13 million visitors in 5 years as well as substantial improvement to the work processes and moral.

Business

For the past one year I have transferred my business experience into the non-profit sector where my knowledge of the market and business processes helps one of the biggest NGOs on eye care in the Netherlads - Eye Care Foundation, to minimize risk, restructure work processes and head to better results worldwide.

Travels

To be a productive and successful citizen of the World one needs a wide perspective and some travel hours and miles. I have visited more than 40 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas in the past 10 years. This allowed me to broaden my perspective and build a substantial internation business network.

Consulting

To have knowledge and experience is not enough to make the world, businesses and societies perform better or reach high results and goals. One needs to be able to share it, to engage, to make it understandable, to adapt it to a particular case or a need and to follow a created strategy. And when all of this is combined, great results can be achieved!

6500 lectures given
35000 participants
43 countries
25 years of experience

A story in years

Let me highlight some years in my professional development that have marked important events worth mentioning here.

  • 1998

    A Marketing Manager with a Mission

    My first substantial marketing achievement was my active results-driven work in the marketing team of Clockwork, a company that grew from 17 people in staff to 350 in 3.5 years.

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  • 2003

    Moving a Public Library

    As the Director of marketing and development at the Public Library of Amsterdam I had the unique chance not only to bring it to new heights, but also successfully move it to a new, modern and concept-changing location.

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  • 2011

    The Journey of the Trainer

    The year when teaching turned serious. Combining teaching at the Amsterdam University of Arts with professorship in the President Program for Ministers at the RANEPA, Moscow, became a precedent in my development and professional path.

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  • 2012

    Increasing the UNESCO World Heritage

    A fascinating journey began with turning the renowned Amsterdam canals into a UNESCO World Heritage Site Canal Ring.

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  • 2013

    An impressive and massive collaboration

    As the Managing Director of the Foundation of Amsterdam Museums (SAM) and Director of Amsterdam Heritage, I had the chance to change the way the industry works and grows.

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  • 2018

    Turning business knowledge into change

    As a professional who has traveled quite some bit around the world I had the chance to put all that knowledge and experience into working for a world with less blindness. It is a beautiful world and all of us deserve to see it!

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  • Today

    I have just started

    I will be happy to hear from you and see if we could collaborate and make the world a little more knowledgeable, collaborative, efficient, productive, successful and good.

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My quote of the month

"Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once.""

Audrey Hepburn

Top achievements

If I have to look back at the past 10 years, evaluate my experiences and interesting projects and chose only 4 to list in this section, may be this would be my selection:

Building a Museum Academy is a very responsible and full of potential project. It has the power to provide vital education to people working in culture, to ignite the generation of ideas, to create collaboration and build sustainability. The success of the first Museum Academy I established or helped to establish motivated me to continue until the number of Museum Academies today is more that 10 in locations such as Amsterdam, Moscow, Altai, Aruba, Tbilisi, Singapore and more.

Progress
90%
Success rate
99%

We learn until we are alive and there is so much in this big wide world we do not know. But the more knowledge and experience we acquire, the more we can share it with others and help for the overal awareness, experience, collaboration, growth and change to improve. I started my serious studies in 1985 and since then I have not stopped learning. I started teaching and training already in 2008 and also have not stopped ever since. I find great pleasure in acquiring and sharing knowledge.

Progress
85%
Success rate
99%

I had the unique opportunity to implement first time Marketing Strategy in a European Library to make it more market driven (more income, more impact, more efficiency). Main results: e.g. major income increase (into millions of euro’s), more members (120k into 325k), more visitors (3mio into 4.5mio), new Corporate Identity, new market driven way of working, theatre, restaurants and cafés in the branches. The project was unique and very successful.

Progress
100%
Success rate
99%

As part of the project I implemented a first time Common Marketing Strategy, set up a foundation & new structure, initiated new marketing products and services (more income, more impact, more internal communications & efficiency). Main results: e.g. Amsterdam Museum Academy, Amsterdam Museum Monitor Publications, Merchandise line, professional marketing & communication (including structural partners) more members (19 to 48 museums), new Corporate Identity, international network for cultural business, market driven way of working together.

Progress
100%
Success rate
99%

Some publications

Stenvers, B. Snoeker, L., Eye Care 35 years (English). JEA: Amsterdam, 2019.
Stenvers, B., Wattel, R., Deaf and hard of hearing museum audience (in Russian). ICOM Russia/Garage: Moscow, 2017.
Stenvers, B., The Allegory of the Medieval Dutch Green Man and its iconography, University of Amsterdam, 2017.
Stenvers, B., Snoeker, L., Amsterdam Museum Monitor 2016. SAM: Amsterdam, 2016.
Stenvers, B., Kobalchuk, I., The Amsterdam Museums Colouring Book, Bekking & Blitz/ SAM: Amersfoort, 2015.
Stenvers, B., Museums in cities working together: more collaboration: better returns. ICOM Russia, Murmansk, 2015.
Stenvers, B., The 17th century allegory of the trade city of Amsterdam. University of Amsterdam, 2014.
And more...

Some of my partners, clients or supporters

The active work in several fields and different locations throughout the years has transformed a wide range of contacts into a valuable professional network. You ca see a sample of the logos of some of my partners, clients or supporters here.

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Get in touch

You can use the form below to contact me regarding any topic of interest connected to my competences or areas in which I could be valuable in a mutual cooperation. You can also contact me via social media listed below. Looking forward to our communication. Thank you.