Femke de Jong

Partner Board Practice Amsterdam

Driven to help leadership be effective. Working with clients and candidates to discover the core of the challenge and the path to improvement. With a focus on the connection between people and governance. A natural connector, incisive and decisive. That's Femke.

Femke is a partner in the Board Practice and focuses on advising executive boards and supervisory boards in the Netherlands. She helps organisations strengthen their leadership by finding purpose-driven leaders with an eye for the context in which they function and the impact they exert. With her corporate governance expertise, she helps them analyse and optimise the quality and effectiveness of leadership, supervision and the governance system.

Femke started her career in law at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Amsterdam. In 2008, she switched to ING. For the first twelve years of her career, she focused on corporate law and international mergers and acquisitions. From 2014, she held various senior management positions including in Legal, HR remuneration policy and change management. She has also been board secretary. This fuelled her passion for governance; the (unwritten) framework that guides relationships between stakeholders. In her vision, the effectiveness of leadership and the quality of supervision depends on the system it is part of. Her ambition is to help companies and individuals make sense of leadership challenges, based on the human dimension (behaviour/culture) and that of the system (policy/structure).

Femke studied Dutch Law and Law and Economics at Utrecht University. She also followed several executive programmes on leadership, transformation and strategic decision-making at INSEAD and supervisory board training at Nyenrode Business University.

Femke lives with her partner, two children and beagle in Bussum. In her spare time, she likes to be outdoors and enjoys running, tennis, design and eating with family and friends.

Femke sees Odgers Berndtson as a laboratory in which an appropriate solution is formulated for each client and candidate in the area of leadership needed to successfully pursue a company's purpose, strategy and ambition. The internal culture breathes authenticity and thus the diversity of being and thinking. An intelligent organisation, with a youthful spirit, ready to enrich the executive search market with uniqueness, creativity and quality as distinctive assets.