Dear graduates and parents, other family and friends It is an honour and pleasure for me to stand here before

you on this important day in your life: your graduation from Maastricht University. It is the end of a period and the start of a new one. I remember the day I graduated from this university still very well. This was in 1996, just over 14 years ago. Today I want to tell you some stories about my personal life, the choices I made and the insights I gained. And I would like to title it: Chase Your Own Dreams. This is not my own idea. I got it from a very good friend of mine, Robbert Rietbroek. When discussing this speech with him, he said: you should title it: Chase your own dreams because that is what you do. You dont chase the big bugs, but you chase your dreams. The first story is about determining your own path After I graduated I realised I needed a job. But what to do? I had studied macroeconomics because I was really interested in the behaviour of financial markets. So I started looking for jobs and applied at several financial institutions, the Dutch Central Bank, some commercial banks and Robeco. In the end I got two job offers, one at Fortis as a trainee and one at Robeco as a fixed income manager. I decided to go for the Robeco one. I wanted to focus and this job allowed me to focus on interest rates. I became a bond investor. First in Dutch government bonds, then in Japanese bonds and via Emerging Market Debt I ended up in High Yield, also known as Junk Bonds. I had a great time and a great job. Got to travel the world: Australia, New Zealand, several trips to the US and Europe. I got a lot of money and bonuses and I had nice colleagues. What more could I want? It was an exciting job as well. I am not going to give a lecture on financial crises now, but only want to mention 3 financial crises that I witnessed whilst working at Robeco. It started with the Asian financial crisis in 1997. The markets panicked. One of the results was a sharp decrease in the price of oil, which then led to the Russian crisis. On August 17th 1998 the Russian government declared a moratorium on domestic debt, which caused a panic in the market. And then of course the burst of the Internet bubble in March 2000. In all these circumstances people were showing herding behaviour. Everybody was following everybody driven by hope to gain a lot of money and fear of being left behind. I realised that this was no longer the world in which I wanted to work and if I wanted to leave I just had to leave fast. The first golden chains were already around my ankles: the salary was high, the lease car nice and the bonus arrangements were very generous. I realised that if I would stay much longer, leaving would become much more difficult. One gets used to a certain level of income and the related spending.I then drove a brand new Audi A4, now I drive a second hand Volkswagen Golf, but I am happier now. On top of that, I never saw a career as a vertical path, as a way to get higher and higher into an organisation. I wanted to build a career consisting of different periods with different experiences that would enrich my life. So after having been a portfolio manager for several years it was time to move on. I got into contact with a reverse headhunter, which got me into contact with TNT. The next 3 years I worked as manager in mergers&acquisitions. I got to travel a lot in Europe. After that I worked a year and a half in China building a new business for TNT. After returning from China I was asked to set up a new organisation for TNT: called TNT Mobility. As the company needed less and less mailmen a new initiative was required to stimulate the mailmen to leave the company voluntarily. This was a completely new field for me. I had no experience

whatsoever in Human Resource Management and also had never envisioned myself working in this area. It turned out that I loved working in this area. It is a great job to do. I did this job at TNT Mobility for a year and a half and then decided that I wanted to make this area my own business. So I quit my job and started to work as an interim manager. With all the ups and downs. But I love it. In a great speech at Stanford in 2005 Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple also stresses the importance of looking for that work that you really love. The following passage is one that I fully endorse: You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle. Like Steve Jobs is saying, you will know when you find it. I had been thinking about setting up my own company for many years. And I had developed a lot of ideas for a business. But never took the step to do it. And now I did because this is what I love doing. So I was doing what I really loved, was working on interesting assignments and I was building a network. But still I decided to make a side step. I think it is important to live your dreams. I had always dreamt of running a hotel and of doing something good for the world. Now the opportunity arose to combine these 2 things: to run a hotel in Nicaragua and to contribute something to the world. Friends of mine had started a hotel, a hotel with a heart. 100% of the profits we make go to educational projects. My friends were going back to the Netherlands and were looking for a successor. So I thought: this is the perfect opportunity. I will be able to run a hotel and set up educational projects. So even though my business was doing very well and when the economic situation was also very positive for my business I decided that I wanted to seize this opportunity. A lot of people were asking me: should you really be doing this? You just started a business and the economic environment is perfect. But I felt I wanted to do this so I went to Nicaragua. Dont let other people determine what you want to do. Follow your own heart. Listen to what you feel you want to do. Chase you own dreams. I recently read a very nice book, which is titled: What I wish I knew when I was 20. It is written by Tina Seelig. And I would like to quote from her. Its incredibly easy to get locked into traditional ways of thinking and to block out possible alternatives. For most of us, there are crowds of people standing on the sidelines, encouraging each of us to stay on the prescribed path, to color inside the lines and to follow the same directions they followed. This is comforting to them and to you. It reinforces choices they made and provides you with a recipe thats easy to follow. But it can also be severely limiting. So to sum up my most important insights that I gained over the past 15 years: live your own life, never stop dreaming and dont settle until you have found what you love. I wish that for myself and I wish that for you. Enjoy the journey that lies ahead of you. Thank you.