Alumni Expertise Hub

Stories & Perspectives

Discover insightful expert blogs and inspiring author stories created by Maastricht University alumni. This hub brings together professional knowledge and perspectives through our Alumni Expert Blogs and the From Alum to Author series.

Are you a UM alumnus interested in sharing your expertise or your journey as an author? Get in touch at alumni@maastrichtuniversity.nl, we’d love to feature your story.

From Alum to Author

In our From Alum to Author series, we feature Maastricht University alumni who have become published authors. They share their expertise and experiences through books, offering insights from their professional and personal journeys. Read their stories to see how fellow alumni turned their knowledge into publications.

Alumna Ingrid Steenhuis: ‘I’m just going to do it!’

In the series ‘From Alum to Author’, we shine a spotlight on UM alumni who share their knowledge and experience through books. This time, we focus on Ingrid Steenhuis, who published her fourth book, Ik ga het gewoon doen! (translated: I’m Just Going to Do It!), in 2025.
Ingrid Steenhuis

The sugar cubes behind your ears

UM alumnus Ağali Mert combines his adventurous career and fascination with the inner ear in ' Over de Kop', sharing insights and debunking myths about dizziness.
Agali Mert

Alumna Angela Stoof: The gentle strength of perspective

Angela Stoof brings hope and humanity into rigid systems, blending psychology, spirituality and storytelling in her mission for meaningful change.
Angela Stoof

Alumna Josje Weusten: Successfully embracing creative writing

UM alumna Josje Weusten has just released her debut novel Fake Fish—a dystopian tale about fake news, AI, and the blurring of reality. Josje shares her creative journey and offers insights into the writing process, plus practical tips for aspiring authors.
Josje Weusten

Alumna Jikkie Has: The power of professional confidence

UM alumna Jikkie Has published Zakelijk Zelfvertrouwen to help others build professional confidence. Drawing from her journey from corporate to entrepreneurship, she shares insights on separating self-worth from success to overcome insecurity.
Jikkie Has

Alumni Expert Blogs

Alumni Expert Blog is a series of guest blogs developed by alumni from Maastricht University containing professional and inspiring content. The blogs entail business related or other inspiring content which are valuable for daily professional and social purposes. By means of these series UM aims to illustrate the variety of valuable knowledge and experience of UM alumni and encourages the exchange of knowledge within its academic community.

Work with multiproblem families

As a family therapist in an ambulatory setting, I see varying psychiatric disorders in multiproblem families. I specifically work with families who not only suffer from any kind of disorders, but also are affected by mild intellectual disability. This blog encompasses two parts. First, it will give...

General,
Alumni and
Heath, Medicine and Life Sciences
Sophie Thijs

Getting jobs in the Eurobubble: A game of inches

I had a lot of fun at the EU Studies Fair. For me it proved a very fruitful event for both students and professionals who are trying to get a foothold in that lions’ den that I call “Eurobubble jobs.” In my experience this can be quite a daunting challenge, but if it has been a journey that I think...

Alumni and
Arts and Social Sciences
Marco Ricorda

Why companies choose for digital coaching in the 21st century

Many companies make use of professional coaching for their employees. Having well performing, healthy and happy employees is the key to success for them. In this article you will read why companies in the 21st century choose for digital coaching instead of traditional coaching on location.

Alumni
Mariëlle Vaneman

Leading in times of complexity

I am sure everybody is aware how our environment has changed over the past years and how ongoing shifts in our societies show us that this will continue for the period ahead. And I am sure that most of us feel inconvenience. Inconvenience as we face challenges not experienced before or at least not...

General and
Alumni
Linda Reumers

Sailing around the World with a Mission

Sailing around the world was not something I had always dreamt of. Exploring the world, yes, but I imagined it would be by 4x4 jeep or VW-minivan. Ivar, on the other hand, grew up a sailor and was living on his sailboat when we met five years ago. As our plans to discover the world together...

Alumni
Lucipara

Cross Border Expansion: Seen from a Global Mobility Perspective

Recently one of my foreign network partners (from France) requested me to assist him in advising and assisting one of his clients in a take over of a Dutch company. He was asked to provide expertise and guidance in the areas of employment law and employee benefits taxation (wage withholding taxes...

Alumni
Fabienne Hol - Van Goethem

To PhD or not to PhD

I knew the letter would arrive in June. Every day I walked towards the front door and quickly glanced at the mailbox. No letter. Then, on a sunny Saturday morning, it was there. I felt like all those high schoolers from all those movies who applied for these fancy universities, waiting for their...

General and
Alumni
Resnke Zuurveen

How to manage your leadership auto-pilot?

 “Perhaps you can change that font and color on that slide there”, I hear myself telling one of my team members.

There I went again, trying to add some marginal value and get an internal fix of being productive. Looking at the face of my colleague, I just realized that my ‘added value’ wasn’t worth...

Alumni
Gaston Schmitz

Invest like a Pro

How private portfolios can benefit from what professional investment managers do

Alumni
Christian Wiehenkamp

Measuring emotions from your smartphone?

Nearly everyone has a smartphone nowadays, and most people also have several other devices (tablets, laptops, etc.) to connect to the internet. Did you know that with just a simple smartphone or laptops companies and universities can already predict what kind of emotions you are experiencing?

Alumni
Bart Rienties

Measuring the Performance of a Supply Chain

A supply chain can be defined as a “system whose constituent parts include material suppliers, production facilities, distribution services and customers linked together via the feed forward flow of materials and the feedback flow of information” (Stevens, 1989).

Alumni

50/50 Story: Combining academia and policy work

The story itself: So, how does it feel to work in academia and do policy work at the same time? First, let us talk more about these 2 areas to understand how these work in practice

Alumni
Irina Burlacu

Lean Startup MVP: How To Make Meaningful Products

Jon Pittman says this about MVP in his Medium post: “engineering and business culture often focus (sic) on minimum features and forgets the viability part.” While I don’t think this tendency is limited to engineering and business culture, I agree that too many product development teams misuse MVP...

Alumni
Brian Pagán

The right people for a successful change-adventure

For a successful change-adventure you need the right people. You’ll have to build a real movement with them! To that end, a group or team of employees will have to take the lead in the change. We like to refer to this as the necessary coalition of change: a group of people with a shared belief that...

Alumni
Woody van Olffen

5 Differences Between Startups & Starting Businesses

In this article I discuss several differences between startups and starting businesses. I find this important because over the last year, I’ve gotten increasingly frustrated about the types of questions I (as a startup founder) would get. “Can you already live from your startup?” “Why is raising...

Alumni
Sabrina Bos