Nele’s love for sustainable and eco hotels, farms and B&Bs has taken her across the globe. Her dream is to revive the old-fashioned hospitality sector one project/city/country at a time. Nele received her Bachelor’s degree in the heart of the hotel world – University of Nevada Las Vegas. After spending 3 years in Las Vegas, she helped build an Estonian casino company into an international corporation.

Nyenrode Business Universiteit awarded Nele an International MBA degree, after which she explored sustainable tourism in Peru, Greece and her native Estonia.

As a talented project manager Nele works with multinational teams across borders and time zones.

Luca is an expert in  Environmental Building Engineering, who, after years of study and research brings his expertise and knowledge to Except.

 As a child it was Lego that inspired Luca to build. After some years of studying, research and work, it was nature that became his biggest source of inspiration. Luca strives to  achieve energy optimization and reduction of environmental impact, while maximizing human living comfort. With that ambition in mind, he directed his education and the first years of his professional career towards green buildings. After a Bachelor in Environmental Engineering in Italy, he worked for a consultancy company that supplied building energy modeling software. Passionate about the achievements of the Danish government, he decided to leave his country to study a Master in Building Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark, where he undertook the Energy Saving study line. This allowed him to work for the Solar Decathlon 2014 and for the International Center for Indoor Environment and Energy.

 After one year of working as a researcher in Denmark, Luca felt the need to move forwards, he wanted to work on more tangible projects, together with others, on making the construction system more sustainable. The combination of smart building components and efficient services offers a promising way forwards. At Except, he has the possibility to understand the connections between  those factors, as well as the opportunity to  analyze buildings as a living organism, and the urban fabric as its ecosystem.  He is now part of the 2nd Except Academy and works as a freelance consultant.

Born and raised in Italy, he has developed a sensitivity towards cultural and natural heritage which he combines with engineering knowledge. He believes that innovation is just the state of the art of tradition; one does not preclude the other, they are rather complementary. 

Khanh is an architect and urban designer who is passionate about sustainability. With a major in spatial design, Khanh has experience with architectural and urban projects in various scales and categories, at different locations worldwide.

This has helped her to not only sharpen her skills as a designer, but also to accumulate insights about urban issues in different contexts. Khanh wants to use her expertise in spatial design to provide solid sustainable solutions, especially for developing countries.

Aside from design, she is passionate about community projects and sustainability. Khanh has founded, coordinated, and managed several projects related to architecture and urbanism. This is how she gives back to her community. Khanh is running a project called Circular Urban Gardens that focuses on urban agriculture and circular economy, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of States.

Ruben is a sustainability technology specialist, with a background in physics and innovation science. During his studies, Ruben found great joy in working on complex sustainability solutions. Having the experience to do quick back of the envelope calculations allows him to think about sustainability concepts in a practical and realistic manner.

Through his general interest for nature, during his studies he did several projects ranging from the sustainability domain up into the healthcare domain. Turning Ruben into a natural sciences generalist. Before starting to work at Except, Ruben worked in the field of software development, developing a mobile application and website.

Freek’s experience in designing learning trajectories helps Except to deliver high-quality and tailor-made programs that develop participants' capacity to accelerate change. He brings to the team a science-based understanding of sustainability and a drive to connect this to the heart and hands of people.

Freek approaches his decade of experience in facilitation and coaching from a personal perspective, developing and strengthening positive change from within and in connectivity with each other.  His facilitation focuses on the person behind the question, strengthening them, and connecting to their highest potential. He has internalized these lessons through hands on experience with founding an NGO, sustainability and strategy consultancy, and interim project management. He is frequently hired as a sparring partner, catalyst, facilitator and advisor for process design and delivery and the development of theories of change. A guiding principle in this is to make it work - together. 

Tim rediscovered his love for sustainability early 2009, and started his own enterprise, following a diverse, partly international career in the chemical/multinational sector. During this period, Tim held a wide variety of positions in technology, operations management, product & resource management, sales, marketing and customer service management. Today these translate to a broad range of expertise, from strategy to execution.

Tim likes trying new, unorthodox ways and partnerships to overcome initial resistance to innovation. He even practices this at home where his children are allowed to refuse a new dish, but only after trying it first.

“We need to focus on what new directions may work, even though we usually have plenty of experts that think it won’t. If we want to get up to speed with sustainability, we need to act more collectively with the general interest in mind. Two areas of common interest, exactly why I enjoy working with Except !”

Tim has two Bachelor degrees, one in chemical engineering and one in business economics. He also completed the CSR Management executive program at Erasmus School of Accounting & Assurance in Rotterdam.

Claudia began her path in sustainability during her bachelors education, where she discovered her love for connecting nature and science. However, she found that she was never satisfied with only knowing how the individual parts worked, and instead, wanted to understand how they interacted in a system. This is where her passion for sustainability and systems thinking began, as she could combine her knowledge and love of biology with innovative and multidisciplinary approaches. She enjoys bridging the gap between the theoretical and practical and aims to solve complex sustainability issues by looking through an ecological, social, and economical lens.

She is currently finishing her MSc in Environmental Biology at Utrecht University with a specialization in Ecology and Natural Resource Management.

Vandhana has been passionate about sustainability for as long as she can remember. Over the years, this passion transitioned from small-scale environmentalism to a much deeper desire to address the problem at the root cause, from within the industry. Vandhana chose to study the built environment because she realized that this was key to influencing people’s mindsets and to making everyday life more sustainable, especially considering the rise in urbanisation.

Vandhana has worked as the lead of sustainability in a student team at university, where she aided the design of a solar-powered, sustainable house, which furthered her interest in the field of circular design in the building industry. She strongly believes that urban mining is the way to go, and that designers and the industry have a big role to play when it comes to shaping the lifestyles of individuals.

Vandhana is currently finishing her BSc in Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences at Eindhoven University of Technology.