A warm welcome to Ellen Hensbergen: Managing Director BeNeLux

As the Invesdor team waves goodbye to former Managing Director Maarten de Jong, Ellen Hensbergen prepares to take over as of April 15. Maarten, who founded Oneplanetcrowd in 2012 under the StartGreen umbrella along with Coenraad de Vries and Laura Rooseboom, is opting for a new challenge after the successful merger with international investment platform Invesdor:

“I look back on a great time, full of conquered challenges and memorable milestones. We have funded hundreds of SMEs, scale-ups and renewable energy projects and gained the trust of over 30,000 investors. From €10,000 euro funding per project in 2012, we went to over €25,000,000 recently for Windpark Fryslân. Through the successful merger with Invesdor, we are now Europe’s largest impact investment platform with over 180,000 investors. And as icing on the cake, just before my retirement, we received the ‘Gouden Stier Award’ for best crowdfunding platform. It is with pride and confidence that I hand over the baton to my successor Ellen Hensbergen.”

– Maarten De Jong, former Managing Director BeNeLux at Invesdor

Meet Ellen Hensbergen 

Ellen Hensbergen is eager to start as Managing Director at Invesdor and is determined to contribute to its (continued) growth. We speak to Ellen about her background, ambitions and vision for the future of Invesdor and making financial and social impact.  

Welcome to the club. We’d love to get to know you better. Can you tell us who Ellen Hensbergen is?  

Sure! I was born in Zeeland on March 8, 1979. Shortly after I moved to Geleen with my parents and older sister. After living in southern Limburg for 4 years, we moved with the family to reformed Barneveld. There they still prayed at school in the morning and read from the Bible at the end of the day. That was an instructive period in which I learned to adapt more easily. I went to study international relations in Groningen, the city where my sister was also studying. I did my internship at the Beijing embassy. There I discovered that traveling made me very happy, but also that the hierarchy and negotiation games made me less happy. On the advice of my sister, I went on a management traineeship at ABN-AMRO. There I noticed for the first time that I really felt at home and that the financial world gave me a lot of energy. When I was declared redundant, I went on a one-year trip around the world with my husband. Once back home, I wanted to get back into financial services. Eventually I became a director at Munt Mortgages. There they believed in transparency, honesty and a quality product and partly because of that I had a huge click with the company and colleagues. What else should you know about me? You can wake me up at night for herring! Without onions, though!  

You have a professional background in the financial world, in the field of mortgages and at various banks. What experience can you bring to the position as Managing Director at Invesdor?  

I understand the basics of investing very well because of my background. I have a lot of expertise in customer service, in growing businesses, and I understand how the financial world works. I also understand the relationship with regulators due to my former role within Munt Mortgages. The other side of the story is that I really like challenges and learning new things. A number of opportunities have come along where I was offered a role in the mortgage world, but I don’t want to just “put on another coat” and keep doing the same thing right now. I’m looking forward to learning.  

What exactly does your role as Managing Director entail in terms of responsibilities and tasks? 

Invesdor is now an implemented platform. That means it is especially important to start growing. I very much believe in the balance between entrepreneurs and providing value to investors. Ideally, we do that better than other platforms. In process, customer service, experience, transparency, engagement with entrepreneurs and the platform, I believe I can add a lot, but also to take Invesdor further into Europe. I want to do this together with the team, which has expertise in areas less known to me. I would like to think from a team effort perspective and it is up to me to set the course in this.  

You are involved with Epic Angels, a network of women executives and entrepreneurs. How important are women in leadership roles to you?  

Epic Angels focuses only on the APAC region, not Europe. All the investors are women. There is still a gap in access to finances for women. I firmly believe that diversity makes your business better. I am therefore happy to contribute to bridging the global gap that still exists in this area.  

Invesdor focuses primarily on sustainability and social impact. How do these themes resonate in your own life?  

I have two daughters and I am very conscious of their future. We are far from being the greenest family in the Netherlands, but we do try to make a difference by eating less meat and riding our bikes more. Even when we fly, we try to skip flying the year after for our holidays. We want to feel that we are contributing and definitely have the belief that it starts with ourselves. Also through the position I will now hold within Invesdor, I feel that I can start to contribute on a larger scale. Not only idealists can improve the world, certainly companies and people with capital can too!  

What will be the biggest challenge for you, as far as you can estimate right now?  

If we really want to make an impact, we need to grow and become even more visible and findable in Europe. The goal is to become the largest pan-European impact investment platform and be top of mind with every investors and entrepreneurs. I see having projects live continuously as an interesting opportunity. 

How do you invest your own money?  

Through Epic Angels, I recently invested in a scale-up in Bangladesh. A lot of people were dying there because they were given a drug that didn’t work or were given a working drug too late. They developed an app in collaboration with general practitioners and hospitals and set up a very large pharmacy that way, so everyone can now get their medicine within 2 hours. These are, of course, problems of a very different order than what we face in Europe. It’s very cool to be able to contribute to such an impactful project by investing in it.  

What does Ellen do when she’s not working?  

The whole family loves music! My husband plays the guitar, my daughter plays the drums and my other daughter plays the piano. I recently started taking singing lessons. We love making music together, as well as going to concerts or festivals. The most important thing for me is to make memories together. That can be with friends, neighbors, family or colleagues. I invest in doing fun things together.