Operational resilience and business continuity workshop

He leverages over 25 years of experience in Europe and Asia in various capacities and project management positions, mainly in the COO sphere of large international corporate and investment banks, covering areas such as finance, IT, operational risk management and compliance. He is a business resilience expert, with a focus on business continuity and crisis management programs for the last 10 years. 

Willem served as the president of Continuity Group Ltd. (CGA), which is a specialized consultancy firm that provides crisis management and business continuity expertise, organizes training and conferences and provides interim management to banks and other financial institutions as well as organizations in a variety of industries, including insurance firms, legal firms, hospitality companies and manufacturing companies. CGA was also the organizer of the annual Hong Kong Business Continuity Conference. 

Previously, Willem has also served as an unremunerated COO for Gay Games Hong Kong Ltd., a recognized charity organization that is licensed to organize the 11th Gay Games in 2023, where he led the teams for program management, finance and accounting, procurement, technology, and security and contingency.

In the beginning of his career, after an internship with the Commission of the European Union and a few years in municipal financial controlling roles with the city of Amsterdam, Willem joined ABN AMRO bank in 1998, originally also in a controlling role. He moved up the ranks and stayed with ABN AMRO for 10 years in various roles, including as business manager of the COO (running projects in finance, operational risk, compliance, IT and client management). 

During this time, in 2001, he was first introduced to business resilience, which has dominated his career since then. Willem managed to shift the business continuity management (BCM) attitude from what was primarily an IT concern into a holistic program involving everyone in the organization through numerous presentations to staff and management, crisis management trainings, plan reviews, awareness campaigns and large-scale business integration tests. Before his move to Singapore in 2008, where he became the ABN AMRO Regional Chief Continuity Officer (CCO) Asia, he was Global Business Continuity Manager for ABN AMRO, which at the time included 120,000 staff in 52 countries. Willem later joined Société Générale in Hong Kong, as the regional director BCM, and he also worked for seven years with Nomura Asia ex Japan as regional head of BCM. 

For many years, Willem played an active role as chairman of the Hong Kong Financial Service Business Continuity Management (HKFSBC) forum, which is the professional peer group for business continuity professionals in the financial sector in Hong Kong, and there he was leader of the WISE15 and WISE17 industry-wide crisis management simulation exercises for the financial industry in Hong Kong. Currently, he is also the Hong Kong Forum leader of the Business Continuity Institute (BCI). 

Willem has presented and/or participated at numerous conferences and seminars on business resilience around the globe. He has received the BCM Industry Personality of the Year 2013 award issued by BCI Asia.

Willem holds an MBA from Business School Nederland. He also holds a Dutch degree of Doctorandus in communication science from the University of Amsterdam and a Propeadeuse degree in economics from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In his spare time he continues work on his Ph.D. thesis on organization culture.

Willem is admitted as the Fellow of the Business Continuity Institute (FBCI).