Maarten Nypels
Maastricht, 1959
Father, partner, friend, biologist, systems thinker, keynote speaker, activist, entrepreneur, musician, writer, composer.
Self-employed since August 23, 2026.
I switch "on" where others see the word impossible.
What I bring to that is below: the short CV for those who want it, and the longer story for those who want to know how I work.
The new chapter
On 3 September 2026 I said goodbye to the City of Rotterdam with a mini-symposium, a one-off band, a keynote and fruit tarts from Maastricht. That keynote, Navigating clear-eyed through uncomfortable times is now the core of what I do: on stage, at the table of boards and programmes, and in coaching leaders and teams who want to go beyond the comfortable analysis. What I built in Rotterdam around vital systems and resilience, I now bring to any public organization, company, and other organization that dares.
→ The keynote, with films and the navigation map: Navigating clear-eyed through uncomfortable times
→ For those who were there on 3 September: Maarten's mini-symposium
→ What I offer: Keynotes & masterclasses · Advice & momentum · Intervision & coaching
About Maarten
2026 - present
Independent. Systems thinker, keynote speaker, and advisor. Keynotes and masterclasses on navigating clear-eyed through uncomfortable times; consultancy assignments regarding vital systems and resilience; coaching for teams and leaders.
2010 – 2026
City of Rotterdam. Program, Change, and Innovation Manager for the Municipality of Rotterdam. Founder and lead of the Vital Systems program and the Polycrisis working group. Co-author of Rotterdam’s first and second Resilience Strategies; member of the Resilient Team Rotterdam (Resilient Cities Network) for ten years. Co-author of the Rotterdam Spatial Vision and the City Ports Structure Vision; project manager for the Rijnhaven area development; crisis manager during the Maastunnel renovation. Programmes: Vital Systems and Resilience. Co-founder, designer, and methodological developer of the Vital Systems program—a program now also implemented in Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Nijmegen. Co-creator of *Atelier Polycrisis* and *Studio Ongemak* (Studio Discomfort, sometimes also called *Studio Awkwardness*), which involved intensive half-day sessions with the municipal secretary, the executive board, and senior management, followed by sessions with numerous stakeholders both within and outside the Municipality of Rotterdam.
2021–2022
2021 -2022
Editor-in-chief and co-author of the book *Plan Bèta – Bèta-onderwijs voor duurzame ontwikkeling* (Plan Beta – STEM Education for Sustainable Development), published by NVON. A book for physics, chemistry, and biology teachers on how to make sustainability an integral theme of their teaching while also strengthening the interconnections between STEM subjects.
2016 – 2023
DRIFT, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. External PhD candidate. Research on steering transitions towards "urban homeostasis": the city as a living, self-regulating system. Research paused - to be continued. Five years guest lecturer in the Erasmus masterclass series The Brain in the Boardroom.
2001 – 2009
Eye Locus Netherlands BV. Founder and director. Supported governments (local to national) in improving their business and investment climate: strategy, organisational development, knowledge management.
1996 – 2001
Grontmij (now Sweco). Business development consultant, sustainability. Co-creator of INES Mainport Rotterdam, an early industrial-ecology programme in the port of Rotterdam area, later applied to business parks across the Netherlands.
1991 – 1996
WISE International and the Instituut for Applied Environmental Economics. Director of WISE; senior consultant at TME: sustainable forest use, trade chains, project lead of an international conference in the Amazon region.
1986 – 1992
International lobbyist en undercover environmental activist. Undertook assignments for Greenpeace, WWF, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam/Novib, and ICCO. Lived and worked in Malaysia, the Philippines, Bhutan, and parts of Africa; provided aid during refugee crises and famines in Ethiopia/Eritrea, Malawi, Mozambique, and South Africa. Participant in the UN conference UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992).
Education
MEBA, Master in Environmental Business Administration, University of Twente (1995)
MSc Biologie, Radboud University Nijmegen (squatter and environmental activist in his student years) (1986)
Three circels
Everything I do comes from three values: creative joy and freedom, integrating enrichment, being part of flows. Around them lies my mission: to seek and create meaning and value by finding, together with people, the right shift of perspective. And around that, the forms it takes: the stage, advising, coaching, teaching, and broadcasting through book, podcast and music. The diagram below is my own navigation map.
Life philosophy
Variety + challenge + connection = life. You can always wake me for a good shift of perspective. Merely seeing a group of people switches me fully "on". Paradigm shifts and innovation processes require solid science, cognitive-emotional openness, practical skill, plain dumb luck and a pinch of stubbornness. Wonderful.
The outside-insider advantage
When, after a fair amount of life, I discovered that on the neurodiversity spectrum I am a hundred-carat "twice-exceptional" (ADHD combined with giftedness) and told friends who have known me for forty years, I was met with blank astonishment: "Hey Maarten, we could have told you that forty years ago."
Don't ask me how it feels from the inside to go through life as a neurodiversity acrobat in an environment where I fundamentally sense I don't fit; I'd be hard to stop. But if you don't ask, you miss the parallel: surviving as a human being in an ever more hostile, dangerous, crumbling environment is exactly what my work is about. I call it the outside-insider advantage: it almost always pays to zoom out first, from the outside, before zooming in, because only then does the inside acquire sense and meaning. Add me temporarily to a team or organization and that outside-insider advantage unfolds in front of you: working from within, passionate and connected, with the eye of the outsider.
note: The Dutch "buitenstebinnenstaander" = the outsider who is inside. "Outside-insider" keeps your order: first outside (zoom out, right hemisphere), then inside (zoom in, left hemisphere).
What that means in practice:
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No disciplinary silos: neuroscience, evolution, politics and education are allowed in the same room.
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Ideas are tested in practice, not only in analysis.
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Fundamental assumptions can be questioned without career risk.
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Driven by what society needs, not by publication metrics.
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Three decades of pattern recognition in very different contexts: Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe; government, NGOs, business.
And, perhaps more important: I am a social animal. I only truly live when love and musical creativity can flow between me and others (listen to Martique and son, my music with my son), I will always be the rebel somewhere, and when it comes to knowledge I am a considerable nerd.
What others say
"Maarten is someone who, in a wholly unorthodox way, can set you thinking about complex societal questions. I got to know him in 2015 and have seen him in several roles. Our first encounter was an inspiring presentation on the successive industrial revolutions. He was able to sketch clearly what these developments mean for the work and the role of government, and thereby set change in motion in the physical domain. The polycrisis was another subject on which Maarten held up a mirror to administrators, senior officials and the organisation as a whole, contributing to greater awareness of the need for an integrated approach. He also, in his very own way, put the necessary approach to vital systems on the map, an approach that is now being followed in several other cities. With his substantive knowledge, his unconventional approach, his creative thinking and his ability to connect, he is a fine colleague to work with, and he really helps organisations on their way."
Linda Molenaar, former corporate director at the City of Rotterdam, now Deputy Ombudsman at the Dutch National Ombudsman (see linkedIn)