At Hedgehog Company, we take an entrepreneurial and interdisciplinary approach to realise sustainability together with our partners. Our dot on the horizon is a climate neutral 2030. We do not write reports that end up in drawers of CEOs. Instead, we build targeted, feasible, and affordable impact strategies!
Joost, one of our enthusiastic founders. He would rather stand on two skis than on one board. You can wake him up at night for some classic Dutch ‘stamppot’ (stew), or for lunch, too. With a small dose of humor from under the rivers, he tries to achieve the ambition he and Philip always wanted to start a company for: creating impact by doing. Pushing the transition towards a sustainable economy.
Joost’s mission is to change the world in such a way that Greta Thunberg can go to bed with peace of mind by at least 2030!
Saro, life cycle specialist, both boxing- and chess enthusiast (not at the same time) and a big fan of the Italian kitchen. His sustainability journey began at his bachelor years ago together with Joost and Philip. After a few years of LCA experience, he is ready to support companies in their transition towards sustainability. He knows best the added value of sustainable performance.
His mission is ensuring sustainability becomes the norm. In this way, he hopes he doesn’t have to explain to his aunt every time during family birthdays that sustainability is more than solar panels on the roof.
Philip, the other enthusiastic founder. He likes to stand on water or snow on one board. Growing up in the middle Dutch forests is where the affection for the hedgehog came from. The wonderful creature that curls up and looks away when in danger. This is also where our name comes from, we like to see this as a metaphor for the response of humans to climate change.
Philip’s mission is to help entrepreneurs get out of their ‘hedgehog position’ and make an impact for a bright future.
Ricardo, our nitrogen sensei, loves to either shred waves or golf courses. On Saturday evenings, you will most probably find him in one of his favorite Jazz cafés in the city centre of Amsterdam. By having an out-of-the-box attitude and a holistic approach, he tackles sustainability challenges head on, thriving on teamwork. During the week, he dedicates himself mainly to calculating nitrogen emissions and conserving nature reserves.
Although the idea of surfing to work appeals to Ricardo, he rather would keep surfing at the beach, and devote himself to keeping Amsterdam above sea level for the coming centuries.
Zoë is a born sustainability queen. With her background in bio-based innovation, she’s mostly analysing the life cycles of products and materials in this field. Zoë loves far travels and good food, of course flying on bio-based fuels…
‘My ambition? To be a driving and supportive force in adopting bio-based materials replacing non-renewable materials.’
Rik is a fanatic basketball and office-pingpong player. Unfortunately, winning from his colleagues is still a dream. In his free-time, he likes reading books on his e-reader. Having a positive attitude and an analytical performance, he supports solving sustainability issues in a wide range of sectors. He likes to dig deep into the different components and materials of different products.
Rik’s mission is localizing as many environmental hotspots in company’s supply chains. This makes our goal-driven support in improving environmental performance of our customers almost easy.
Chimaine is our Science, Management and Innovation intern, studying at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. Here she focuses on biodiversity. The world without biodiversity would be a dull and grey place. Two days a week, she faces the always challenging NS train getting to Amsterdam. Originally she's from the lovely Venlo, famous for its carnival, Chimaine's favourite event that she looks forward to all year.
Chimaine's mission is to make biodiversity a quantifiable topic in sustainability assessments. And graduating, of course.
As a die-hard Arsenal fan, Nata is either really happy or really sad on Mondays. Nata's hunger for knowledge and her curiosity never sleep. Her passion for pubquizes and philosophical discussions make this rather clear. In her free time she likes to sing (sometimes also at work), teach English and become a Dutch citizen.
Nata's mission is to help companies getting insight into their impact on the climate. Sustainability can be quite daunting at first, but Nata can make it understandable and interesting for clients.
Victor prefers to spend his days off on his boat on the Amsterdam canals. His entrepreneurial spirit has already developed a brilliant concept. This allows him and his fellow boat owners in Amsterdam to continue sailing carefree in the future, as soon as this has to be done on batteries. In addition, he remains a driving force in our team.
His mission: The Netherlands (almost) emission-free by 2030, so Victor knows for sure that he can continue to enjoy the Amsterdam canals in the distant future without having to use a submarine!
Luc is our creative multi talent. He creates cohesion in our design and communication. He is the creator of this website, our carbon dashboard (which is coming soon) and has done the rebranding of Hedgehog Company. Like most artists, Luc prefers working in the middle of the night.
Luc believes that everything can be sustainable and should be. With his own company, he helps ethical businesses with sustainable branding and web design.
We do not ‘just’ deliver your results and report. When a project ends, we actually take the time for our free delivery meeting with you and your colleagues. In this meeting, we ensure the correct interpretation and implementation of the results. We also create your personal dashboard on our web based app. This dashboard lets you access your results in a clear overview anytime you want and can be a starting point to monitor your progress over the years.
In the delivery meeting, we discuss low-hanging fruit solutions to improve your sustainable performance in the short term. In addition, we support the thought process for your sustainable strategy towards 2030, and beyond.
A wise man once said, ‘you can’t manage, what you can’t measure’. All our projects start with a sustainability impact assessment. Depending on your goal and situation, this assessment can be on a product, service, organisation, construction project or full investment portfolio.
Sustainable transition needs a different approach, focused on interdisciplinary thinking. We need your insights to translate your activities into correct sustainability impact metrics. Hence, we strive for a collaborative relationship with our clients, instead of a conventional customer relationship.
Cliché but true. We’ve started this business to create impact by doing. We are intrinsically motivated to improve our relationship with each other and our planet.
At Hedgehog Company, we work with businesses, investors, and construction project developers across the planet. We enable your sustainable transition with a systems-thinking approach, entrepreneurial drive, and data-driven support.
Piet-Hein spent 14 years at Accenture Strategy as an advisor to CFOs and their organisations. He has since started to focus on sustainability. To this end, he works at the Black Jaguar Foundation and the North Sea Farmers. The Black Jaguar Foundation is an NGO working to realize the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor in Brazil. This will be 2,600 km long and requires the restoration of 1.7 billion trees. The North Sea Farmers are committed to the large-scale cultivation of seaweed in the North Sea as part of future agriculture. Piet-Hein’s strategic business background, analytical skills and enthusiasm form a key role in our RvA.
Coyan Tromp is an assistant professor and curriculum developer at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She specialises in issues concerning complex problems, interdisciplinary solutions and paradigm changes. She wrote the book Wicked Philosophy: Philosophy for Science and Vision Development for Complex Problems, among others. Coyan was one of the founders of the Future Planet Studies bachelor’s degree at the University of Amsterdam. This bachelor is also the cradle for Hedgehog Company; each of our three founders graduated in this. With her philosophical-scientific background and interdisciplinary view, Coyan is a fixed value in the RvA.
