"Leadership is a Creative Act" Introducing Mark Vernooij

We're delighted to dive deeper with Mark Vernooij, our new Board Member at ADCN. Mark is a Partner at THNK School of Creative Leadership – which was dubbed by Forbes as the “leadership approach to disrupt thinking” and by Stanford as the “future of higher education.”

"LEADERSHIP IS A CREATIVE ACT"

Mark has led a diverse and curious life with many teachers – he studied engineering at Delft University of Technology, received an MBA from INSEAD and learned Design Thinking at Stanford. He lived across Switzerland, France, Singapore, and Hong Kong before settling in Amsterdam and founded several companies along the way before THNK. He additionally worked as an innovation consultant for major firms like Accenture and McKinsey.

His latest venture with THNK is one that brings him incredible purpose and drive. THNK School of Creative Leadership is purpose-driven social enterprise, one that makes transformative leadership programs to develop creative leaders capable of delivering innovative solutions to the world’s greatest challenges. As the antithesis to conventional professional programs, THNK's way of working is direly needed in our times, which is why we are delighted that Mark's mission at ADCN is to guide the development of the new ADCN Academy and its programs.

"Leadership is a creative act." says Vernooij, "Leadership is all about setting a vision, gathering resources to realize this vision and bringing people along in this process. Each of these acts is a creative act."

"WE NEED TO BE WORLD LEADERS IN CREATING SUSTAINABLE BRANDS AND BUSINESSES."

"ADCN and its members are in a unique position to fuel the Netherlands with creativity, we need to be world leaders in creating sustainable brands and sustainable businesses." And doing that takes a lot of out of the box creativity. Mark believes that converging creative minds from different worlds together can make the biggest impact, as he had experienced himself:

"I always find creative growth with others. I'm an extrovert thinker, which means I think better with others around me. This is why I'm always looking to engage with people from outside my direct field of work. I remember big creative growth spurts working with the Burning Man leadership, the World Economic Forum and with the diverse and crazy bunch of individuals setting up THNK."

"DON'T TAKE YOURSELF SO F*ING SERIOUSLY."

As much pressure as creativity is under right now, we agree with Mark that it's never a good idea to take yourself too seriously, as that would only hamper the flow. When asked what advice he would give his younger self, he says:

"Rule number 6: don't take yourself so f*ing seriously."

In his free time he enjoys racing cars (he's competed for two years in the Dutch Rally Championship), cycling, boating on Amsterdam’s canals and walking his dog on the beach.

Welcome to the ADCN family Mark, we're delighted to have you on board!