Arnhem, 27 May 2021
Marco Schouten is appointed as the new CEO of Agriterra. By mid September he will succeed Kees Blokland, the founder of Agriterra, who will retire at the beginning of Q4. Schouten: “I see it as a great honour to follow in Kees Blokland’s footsteps, further shaping the future of a wonderful organisation like Agriterra.”
Schouten is a 51-year-old business economist and has had the opportunity to work in a diversity of roles and countries during his career. An overview of his professional background you can find on LinkedIn (https://nl.linkedin.com/in/marco-schouten-1106aa6).
Schouten: “When making my decision to join Agriterra, four areas stood out most: 1) I find it important to contribute to a purpose driven organisation like Agriterra. “Making a difference” is a strong driver for me. 2) I hope -and think- that my baggage as CEO of a strikingly similar organisation may be of benefit to Agriterra. The organisation I was leading, VEI, is a social venture from-and-for water organisations that organises peer-to-peer support to make a impact on the realisation of SDG#6. Over the last decade, VEI has grown a lot in size as in level of professionalisation. 3) By nature, I am pretty down-to-earth and have a strong practical disposition. Agriterra professionalises cooperatives and farmers organisations, and this links well to such attitude, and 4) What I have seen and heard so far, we have a great team at Agriterra and I am excited to build upon that team as we continue to develop peer support and our added value to the international agricultural and food sector.”
The first official working day of Marco Schouten at Agriterra will be 15 September, to allow enough time for a smooth handover. He is really looking forward to that. “I am excited about many of the things we will be working on together at Agriterra in the near future.”
Schouten will make a tour to get to know internal and external stakeholders.
