Meet Sustaira: Jaap
Here at Sustaira, we get to know all of our employees very well and we want you to know them too! For every new team member, we ask them the following questions to learn about who they are and why sustainability matters to them. Today, we introduce Jaap van der Velden. Read Jaap’s interview below and enjoy!
Jaap’s Interview:
Where is home for you?:
Currently, I live in Utrecht, the Netherlands!
What made you decide to join the Sustaira team?
I have been working with Mendix for a little over 4 years. In 2019 I did my traineeship at TimeSeries, after which I worked for several of their customers. 2 years later, TimeSeries was acquired by Mendix and I started working on internal projects.
Last September I quit my job at Mendix and I decided that I didn’t want to move to a new job immediately, but take time off to do other things. But also to think about what I want in my next job. I came to the conclusion that I wanted to continue working as a Mendix developer, but preferably within a smaller company and a company that wants to make a positive environmental or social impact. I believe I’ve found all of these qualities within Sustaira, and I’m excited to start working there in January 2024!
What is your role at Sustaira?
I will start working as a Mendix developer, and work on (extending) the ESG & Sustainability platform and implementation at the customer side.
What does sustainability mean to you?
To me this means being aware about the impact of your actions on the world and what this means for current and future generations. Only when you’re aware of this impact, can you start improving it. For me this means that I made some decisions like only eating vegetarian/vegan, buying second hand as much as possible, and traveling by train instead of by plane within Europe.
Where do you believe technology meets sustainability in your vision?
I think it can be very difficult to understand for us as individual people, businesses or governments what we can do to act more sustainable. I believe that technology can help to make the gap visible between where we currently stand and where we need to move towards. But also, as we saw during the Covid pandemic, technology can change the way we travel and meet, showing that traveling long distances in order to meet in person is not always necessary.
Tell us a little bit about you! Just a couple of fun facts or something people may not know. What do you believe people need to know about you?
I grew up in a small village in Brabant, but have been living in Utrecht for 14 years now. In my free time I enjoy bouldering and top rope climbing (and I’m pretty spoiled, because there are 4 boulder gyms and 2 top rope gyms in Utrecht!). I go to a lot of concerts and festivals, and I also really like cooking and baking. I’m a vegetarian, but especially when baking I like to create something vegan because of the extra challenge to see which ingredients can be substituted.
During my summer holidays, I like going into the mountains. For the last 3 years, I went on multiple day hut-to-hut hikes in Austria, Switzerland and Slovenia. Maybe in the future I want to combine this with climbing, or I want to do a long distance hiking trail like the West Highland Way or the Kungsleden.