Irene Koel, who started as an advertiser at FHV/BBDO, once came up with the Hamsterweken (Hamster Weeks) campaign for Albert Heijn with her team. She then moved into business development and innovation (because she no longer wanted to make ads for Pickwick Apple/Cinnamon). She wrote columns for the Financieel Dagblad, sold her marketing company BLOEI, and now advises companies on innovation and sustainable growth through her network company The Zooooo. She teaches SME companies at the Design Academy and the Rabo Academy, and volunteers helping businesses in rural India (hoping to earn some karmic points in the process).
All her activities stem from one mission: to challenge companies to be more creative, original, and purposeful in their business approach.
Experience
As a speaker, she draws on her experiences and has a jukebox full of stories with which she inspires, excites, and sends the audience home with practical tips & tricks. Irene is a contemporary of the future and starts from creativity. She has a deep and clear understanding of what the market wants and how to respond to it in an original way. Former advertiser, now a marketer, entrepreneur, lecturer, vlogger, volunteer, and investor: from a work perspective, she is entirely ‘on trend’.
Her goal
With her 25 years of business experience, she enthusiastically and humorously shares all the lessons she has learned. She switches between vision and action, between now and tomorrow, offering useful tips and tricks along the way. Her goal is to energize companies, organizations, and people and help them through transformation. In addition to speaking, she helps companies in transition as a midwife for innovation. She advocates for people to do more on their own.
Her own business
From clients, Irene (with her network organization The Zooooo) turns them into action-takers and delivers original, valuable business concepts with her team. Learning by doing. To reinvent herself, as an entrepreneur, she is actively working on her own online e-learning channel MonkeyDo and is involved in social innovation companies such as OOPOEH (grandparents pet-sitting) and A Beautiful Story (fairtrade jewelry & lifestyle). Irene also teaches as a guest lecturer at the Design Academy Eindhoven. She gains inspiration from all sides, which is valuable to share with her audience. She shares lessons from her adventures in a humorous and unique way.
Her work life
Companies she has worked for include: Albert Heijn, KPN, Vodafone, Randstad, Menzis, FrieslandCampina, Unilever, Artis, Rabobank, Grolsch, Heineken, Douwe Egberts, IVN, Solidaridad, Max Havelaar, Red Cross, MVO Nederland, PLAN.
Irene’s own podcast MonkeyTalk continuously ranks in the top 3 of the Apple Podcast management category in the Netherlands. With MonkeyTalk, she hopes to ignite creativity in everyone. Get to know Irene by listening to MonkeyTalk, available on all podcast platforms, from Apple to Spotify.
