Bert-Jan is a senior consultant and Director of Ockham IPS. He is an experienced consultant, researcher, evaluator and project manager. He was responsible for the execution of more than 150 research projects in the past 19 years, for a wide range of international clients (such as the European Commission, the European Parliament, Cedefop, ETF, Eurofound, UNESCO, UNICEF, ILO etc.), but also Dutch clients (various ministries, Dutch VET council, NCP NLQF etc.).

He is an expert in the field of vocational education, lifelong learning, labour market, and employment policies and regularly publishes on these topics. He is intimate with EU policymaking processes and regularly advises on EU Better Regulation procedures. He has extensive experience in monitoring and evaluating EU programmes (such as ESF, ERDF, LLP, Erasmus + and INTERREG).

He is member of the Court of Audit of the Municipality Zwolle and Municipality Deventer and PhD candidate at the Open Universiteit in the Netherlands, where he is working on the topics self-direction of workers, learning culture and effective learning in organisations. He has an academic background in economic geography and previously worked as research manager for Research voor Beleid and Panteia.