Alan is the founder of aethr, an independent executive search and Talent Acquisition (TA) advisory practice based in Amsterdam, working across the Netherlands, France and Belgium.

He holds an MBA in Marketing from SKEMA Business School and brings 15 years of in-house TA leadership at Philips:

• Talent Acquisition Director South Europe, UK & Ireland: Built and led high-performing recruiting teams while personally handling senior hires. Brought newly acquired countries into a single, compliant hiring model, delivering 600 hires a year.

• Global Talent Acquisition Business Partner (Supply Chain, R&D, Finance, HR, Legal and IT): Owned the hiring strategy and forecast for these functions, coordinating the teams responsible for market insight, employer branding and day-to-day recruiting (5,000 hires a year). 

• Global Program Manager, Workforce Optimization: Led a joint HR and Procurement program to rationalize workforce costs without losing critical skills. Showed business leaders where skilled people were spending time on low-value tasks, and proposed alternatives such as early-career hires, contractors, outsourcing, offshoring or automation. Supported the rollout across Manufacturing, Quality, HR, IT and R&D.

Before Philips, Alan spent a decade in recruitment agencies, managing teams and running end-to-end searches across FMCG, pharma, medical devices and B2B.