About me

The short read:

• PhD in the Sociology of Work field
• >15 years of experience in social housing
• Digital Transformation wonk
• Ethnographer, storyteller, and great
  listener
• Passionate about better Work Futures
• Experienced change & adoption
  professional
• Focus on value and real-world impact
• No-nonsense and Dutch direct

I am more than my work, I also:

• Brew my own beer
• Love DIY
• Read a lot of Scifi
• Run for fun
• Hike in the hills & mountains
• Play boardgames
• Am a motorsports geek
  (F1,2,3, MotoGP,2,3, Indycar)

Hi, I’m Gaby, and, first and foremost, I am someone who simply cares about things working well for everyone, from leadership to colleagues to customers. For things to work well in 2024, people and technology have to work in a mutually agreed, sustainable, and accessible harmony. Whether we’re talking about accessing and providing vital public services, or being able to do our jobs with confidence and conviction, none of this is possible if we direct all our focus to the technology alone and expect people to just follow and deliver, no questions asked.

I have over 15 years of experience in the social housing sector, starting off in customer service in the Netherlands, and ending up a Digital and Technology Transformation consultant providing to that sector in the UK. In those years, in whatever function or place in the hierarchy, I was (and am) known as the person who ‘just gets stuff done’. I don’t have or make time for beating around bushes, let alone entire forests.

Instead of just telling others what to do, I want to get myself in the mix, not just because I thoroughly enjoy that, but also because it allows me to gain hands-on experience of the things that are going well and things that need improvement. I also am a proud generalist and connector of people, not afraid to step aside to let people who are better at things than me do their thing. Ego never delivers real value.

Between 2013 and 2017 I worked towards and obtained a PhD at Loughborough University’s School of Business and Economics. My research centred around Digital Exclusion & Welfare Reform in the UK.

I aimed for more than any potential academic impact; my research was hands-on and immediately valuable to the organisation that hosted my research. My thesis, based on ethnographic methods, involved immersing myself in a volunteer role at a ‘job club,’ a community service helping people with their ever-digitised job searches.

At the moment, I am working and available as a Digital Transformation & Workplace Consultant, which can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people and organizations. For me, it means that will be passionately and hands-on involved with whatever we are working on. At the moment, I’m working on a big digital transformation project that is happening on the back of a merger of a global market leader.

Bringing together over 30,000 employees across the entire world into one digital workplace brings both challenges and opportunities, and I’m there to ensure we tackle the challenges of inconvenience and resistance, and grasp the opportunities such as upskilling and empowering employees at all levels to have a say about new ways of working.

If you need a bit more jargon, then please continue to read below!