I am a result oriented cultural anthropologist (MSc.), economist (BSc.) and teacher-trainer Spanish (BSc., teaching credential) with more than 25 years of working experience in an international and intercultural context, as a trainer and consultant in Europe and developing countries. I provide global entrepreneurship services to business development & training institutions and entrepreneurs.

Throughout my career, I have gained extensive experience in designing and managing projects in the area of enterprise development and start-ups for youth and women. I have developed capacity building programmes offering tailormade business creation programmes, including training through innovative and blended learning methodologies.

My expertise includes training and mentoring of MSMEs in different phases of development, from ideation to scaling up. In addition, I have designed and (co)managed several entrepreneurship education programmes in TVET, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

I get my inspiration from having lived and worked in an international and intercultural environment throughout my life.

Living and working abroad

During my childhood I lived in Suriname (Latin America), a former colony of the Netherlands. It was there that I learned about a multi ethnic society with people from various cultures living together.

When studying cultural anthropology, I developed my passion for other cultures, small business development and inclusive entrepreneurship. 

I worked with youngsters in Africa (Zambia, Tanzania, Ethiopia) that learned to become entrepreneurs after their vocational training. I skilled myself in being a trainer and business advisor and how to train basic (entrepreneurial) skills to young people and let them experience entrepreneurship by action learning training methods.

I have worked many years with migrant entrepreneurs in The Netherlands. I worked for eight years as a trainer and consultant for a consultancy firm in SME development in Europe and developing countries, mainly in Africa. I worked on various assignments in Tanzania, Ghana, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Surinam.

Since 2009 I am an entrepreneur myself and run my business Españu Global.

Sharing knowledge and experience

I very much like to work and collaborate with organisations and entrepreneurs that are open minded and prepared to critically assess their own business operations and behaviour, so that they will improve in doing business across national and cultural borders.

I like to share my experience with people from different (cultural) backgrounds in various work-related situations, such as train and coach entrepreneurs, work in a cross-cultural team, manage such a team, and train trainers.