NL Sports Week World Expo

Dr. Monique Simons has a background in Human Movement Sciences and holds a PhD from the VU University Amsterdam (Health Sciences) on a study of ‘active video games’. Dr. Simons is currently working as a scientific researcher at Wageningen University & Research (Consumption and Healthy Lifestyles). She works on socially relevant issues around healthy lifestyles and behavior change with partnerships between science, practice and policy.

Jacqueline Kronenburg is a seasoned public affairs manager and communications professional working with the Knowledge Centre for Sport & Physical Activity Netherlands. After a study of and working in journalism she pursued a career in public relations and communications securing positions with a Dutch airline and several national care organisations. In her work for the knowledge centre she focuses on monitoring decision-making in the field of sport, physical activity and lifestyle health in both The Hague and Brussels. She identifies and describes developments in these fields with a view to supporting professionals, while acting as a neutral source of information for politicians and stakeholders. Regarding the international affairs portfolio, Jacqueline is the contact person for organisations that seek collaboration with the Knowledge Centre, in Europe as well as outside. She has been the congress rapporteur for the TAFISA World Congress (Seoul, 2017) and keynote speaker at a women’s conference organised by the Dutch consulate (St Petersburg – Russia, 2018).
As an active member of the worldwide organisation Soroptimist International – ‘the global voice for women’ – she is committed to supporting the status of women and girls, and certainly in the field of sports.

Keri McDonald undertakes research on the status of Sport for All around the globe as well as manage projects to support partners and stakeholders in the TAFISA mission to increase sport and physical activity for all citizens worldwide. She is project leader of Europe in Action, an Erasmus+funded project which translates European sport policy into priorities for practical action, including the topic of gender equity in sport. On top of that, she leads the FLOT mentorship and mobility programme which aims to equip a generation of young African and European women with the skills, knowledge, experience and guidance to lead the Sport for All Movement​.

Dutch national Joyce Bijl – sales director and program Head Middle East for Pontoon Solutions (Adecco Group) – will moderate this seminar with a theme that is close to her heart. In recent years, Joyce has been physically very active. She enjoys to challengs herself through sports. She participated in an official white collar boxing fight, completed the Marathon des Sables and finished the Full Ironman in Lanzarote, to name a few. “Finishing these kinds of events brings you so much more: the happiness, the pride and the confidence that you are able to do so much more, if you get your head around it”. Joyce held several positions in a number of countries and has been located in the Netherlands, China, Hong Kong and the United Arabic Emirates. Joyce is very proud of the multiple awards she received throughout her career with the most recent ones the recognition of Forbes as one of the top 100 leaders in the Arabic world both in 2017 and 2018. 2018 was especially rewarding, being the only female who made it to the list.
Additionally she is very engaged with the Win4youth wellbeing program under the Adecco Group Foundation. In this program Adecco encourages colleagues, clients and contractors to be physically active and track these activities. The distance or time spent on the activity gets converted into charity funding for Plan International.

Laura van Leeuwen, general manager Ajax Youth Academy at Sharjah FC (UAE)

In this position, Laura is responsible for ensuring good conditions for the implementation of Ajax’s football philosophy at the youth academy of Sharjah FC (UAE). She supervises and monitors the progress of the Ajax team at Sharjah FC and manages commercial activities.

Mariam is Board Member of the Fatima Bint Mubarak World Sports Award and Board Member of the International Conference of Sports for Women.
Her role as Conference Specialist – Communication and Technical Affairs in Fatima Bint Mubarak Ladies Sports Academy is to provide Emirati women and women residing in the UAE with educational health and sports seminars, workshops and forums on a wide spectrum of topics. This includes: sports psychology, healthy nutrition and lifestyle. Mariam represents the Academy and the United Arab Emirates in several conferences inside and outside the country. Mariam also is a presenter at “Hayaakum” which is a sports social program provided by FBMA to host Emirati influential sport figures.
B.S.: Health Information Management, HCT Abu Dhabi Women’s College, UAE, Abu Dhabi.

Amna’s passion for sports and basketball got her to be a part of the UAE national basketball team. Her experiences for 13 years in basketball including the Al Nasr and Bani Yas team helped her land her spot at the ADLC basketball team.

Amna is now a senior associate in the information technology department (IT) – DevOps engineering team. Her main role is to support the development cycle for all developers around the IT department by facilitating the work management and their release process.
B.S.: Multimedia Design, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Abeer Khaja currently works as acting director of marketing in Dubai Sports Council. She’s passionate about media overall
and more specially media in sports and culture. She raises awareness in the field through her current job and in her free time she often speaks about the benefits of active living. She hopes and aspire to represent the UAE in international and local forums as an Emirati career woman. She is also a co-founder of Ana Gow running club a running club dedicated to women in the UAE.