Can you tell me a little about your communications background and what you are working on this year or quarter?
Born and raised in the Netherlands, I started my communications career at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. After I completed my master’s, I moved to Australia and I worked at Ogilvy PR for three years delivering employee/change communication programs for local and multinational clients. After that, I made the move back in-house and I joined Ecolab, a global sustainability leader in water, hygiene and infection prevention.
This month I’m celebrating my 10-year anniversary with Ecolab and I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to live and work in different parts of the world. I started in Sydney as the communications lead for the Australia/New Zealand/Fiji market and then moved to Singapore to lead communications for the Asia Pacific region. At the end of 2021, I moved with my family to the US. We live in Naperville, IL.
I currently lead internal communications for Ecolab’s Global Industrial Group and I’m also part of the program team that recently launched ‘Ecolab Water for Climate’, a new offering that helps companies deliver on their water, climate and business growth goals. My top priority for the next few months is to help drive internal and external awareness of the program, and work closely with marketing to support sales enablement. The pressure on companies to act on climate change has never been greater and there are many opportunities from a communication perspective to help transform the way businesses think about water and advance sustainable business growth.
If you were to give advice to someone who wanted to move into a comms career, what on-the-job experience or activities would you recommend?
Firstly, take the time to really understand the organization – listen, observe and ask questions. Try to get access to things like employee survey results and customer research data. Ask for permission to conduct a few interviews yourself and do some field trips. Whether it’s visiting a manufacturing plant or a customer site (wherever the “magic” happens), you want to make sure that you ground yourself in the value the organization delivers. From there, you can work to identify new or improved communication strategies to connect with your internal and/or external audience groups. When I joined Ecolab, one of the first things I asked for was permission to conduct a series of focus groups and interviews with frontline managers. Some leaders struggled with the qualitative findings (“who said that?”) but as I surfaced common themes and concerns, the leadership team could see the opportunities for improvement and I was able to swiftly identify my priorities with strong leadership buy-in.
Secondly, pay close attention to how 
you present yourself and your work. I have interviewed candidates for comms manager roles who struggle to provide clear perspectives or tell stories about their experience and what they have learnt or achieved. The ability to distill key messages and connect your audience is such an important part of our role – it’s impactful to show those skills using your own experience as ‘content’.
For those at an entry-level, my advice would be to build a portfolio that shows off your writing skills and creativity – for example, include blogs you have written or materials you have developed during college assignments or internships.
In the context of Women’s History Month, was there a key female leader, mentor or communications professional that helped inspire you? In what ways?
It’s hard to pick just one person – I’ve had several female bosses and they have all shaped my career journey in different ways. Most of them were very strong comms practitioners who inspired me with their creativity and drive to deliver exceptional work. At different stages of my career, I had different role models. For example, when I made the transition from individual contributor to people manager, I looked for guidance on how to develop talent and build a strong team. As I reflect on who left the most impact, it’s those who were very authentic and had the capability to connect with people and build diverse, collaborative teams. One of my first bosses was a calm and confident leader – she was able to command a room in a pleasant and positive way and I remember being very impressed with that. It made me think about the impact leaders have. As communication professionals we often deal with challenging topics or sensitive changes and we must protect our energy – our “sparkle” – to be the best version of ourselves so we can effectively help our teams, colleagues, other leaders and ultimately the organization, succeed.
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