van Hoolwerff, Richard
Country Manager Liberia & Côte d'Ivoire, SPARK
Richard lives in Abidjan where he works for SPARK (http://www.spark-online.org/), a Dutch NGO that empowers young people in conflict affected countries through entrepreneurship and higher education. In the 5 years Richard has lived in West Africa he has set up a business incubator (http://bscmonrovia.com/) in Monrovia, worked on establishing Africa's first Special Economic Zone Project for social enterprises (http://sesezliberia.org/) and helped launch Liberia's first art-house cinema.
He has worked alongside organizations such as Humanity United, the World Bank, Virgin Unite and Chevron. He helped organize Liberia's first ever marathon (http://www.liberiamarathon.com/) and has founded and currently runs Emergi (http://emergi.nl/), a cleantech energy company. Before joining SPARK Richard founded SKEK, a student-run restaurant in Amsterdam, after completing a BSc in psychology and political sciences as well as an MSc in cognitive science from the University of Amsterdam.