What do the founder of e-mobility startup Felyx, the strategy and operations lead at Spotify, and the chief strategy officer at Infinitas Learning have in common? They’re all alumni of SparkOptimus! Friday before Halloween, a big group of ex-Sparkies returned to our Amsterdam office to catch up with each other over snacks and drinks.
Reconnecting was indeed what everybody had been missing for a while, as the pandemic has kept us from sending off leaving Sparkies properly for while. Usually, there were proper goodbye parties and speeches that reminisced on how the person has grown and revived fun memories. As this tradition had to be paused for quite a while, it was high time to make up for it during the alumni party.
Not only old colleagues gave the alumni their 3 minutes of fame, also SparkOptimus co-founder Alexandra Jankovich took the time to highlight and celebrate the exciting new career paths of the alumni in a speech. Very intriguing to see to which companies the Spark-spirit has spread!
Marinus Israël, for example, is now CPO at Lepaya, a company offering ‘blended learning’ trainings for professionals. He’s not the only person who switched to education, on ex-Sparkie is now chief strategy officer at Infinitas Learning.
Maarten Poot co-founded Felyx, a sharing platform for e-scooters that operates in many Dutch and German cities. While one conquers e-mobility, another ex-Sparkie makes waves in the eyewear market: Marijke van Ark is the head of strategy and business intelligence at Ace & Tate.
Two old colleagues found their next challenge in rapid grocery delivery services Flink and Zapp. Similarly, two ex-Sparkies went to investment company HAL investment.
If we look at media companies, we find Luisa Eymer who is now strategy and operations lead at Spotify, and Felix van der Sommen, chief digital officer at Keesing.
This was only a small selection of the incredible careers ex-Sparkies are currently having. We can’t wait to hear even more of it at the next alumni event!
