Talent for Good Forum

Career & Skills workshops

Regeneration for Changemakers: Sustain Your Energy, Sustain Your Impact
Tina Fischbach, Regeneration for Changemakers
People who care deeply are often the most at risk of burnout. This workshop invites you to slow down, reflect, and reconnect with what keeps you going. Through guided exercises and honest conversation, you’ll identify what gives you energy and what depletes it — and leave with one concrete, realistic action you can take the very next day to protect your wellbeing for the long haul.

Courageous Leadership — Leading When It Matters Most
Piero Gandini
What does it actually mean to lead when the stakes are real? Drawing on fourteen years of experience in humanitarian crises, Piero Gandini cuts through leadership theory to explore three interconnected qualities — courage, creativity, and care — and what it takes to act on them when conformity is the easier path. This session is for future leaders who want to build good habits before the compromises accumulate.

How to Weave Impact into Your Startup from Day One
We Are Changemakers
Starting a business? Purpose doesn’t have to be an afterthought. We Are Changemakers — an incubator for mission-driven founders — shares how to embed impact into the DNA of your venture from the very beginning, so that doing good and building something sustainable go hand in hand.

Negotiation Skills: How to Get Your Money on the Table
Vicky Chan (JobOn) & Szonja Zsiros (Szonja Zsiros Career Advisory)
Salary negotiation is a skill, not a personality trait — and it’s one most people were never taught. In this practical session, career advisor Szonja Zsiros walks you through how to research your worth, handle tricky questions about expectations, respond to low offers, and advocate for yourself with clarity and confidence.

The Art of Networking: Building Meaningful Connections
Jill Wilkinson (The Hague Humanity Hub) & Diana Eggleston (Special Envoy City of Peace and Justice)
Networking is one of the most powerful tools for building a mission-driven career — and one of the most underused. In this practical, hands-on session, you’ll learn and practice the techniques that help you make genuine connections, leave a lasting impression, and grow your network with intention.

How Volunteering can Benefit Your Career
Volunteer The Hague — Tetyana Benzeroual
Volunteering is more than a line on your CV — it’s a doorway into networks, skills, and opportunities that traditional job applications can’t always unlock. This session explores how to leverage volunteering strategically: how to choose the right organisation, how to translate the experience into career capital, and how to use it to bridge gaps and open doors.

Kickstart Your Career After Graduation
Work in South Holland — Gerko Visee
Thinking of staying in the Netherlands after you graduate? This session covers the practical essentials: which sectors and companies are actively hiring internationals, how to navigate the orientation year and highly skilled migrant permits, and how to put together a CV and cover letter that actually gets read. A grounded, no-nonsense guide to building your future in the region.

Using Technology for Impact: From Idea to Real-World Solution
EviSafe — Naomi Hija, Founder & CEO
How do you turn a personal mission into a product that protects people at scale? EviSafe founder Naomi Hija takes you behind the scenes of building a tech-driven solution to address domestic and gender-based violence — from proof of concept to MVP to first paying customers in under two years. Whether your background is in IT, design, policy, or business, this session will help you see how your skills can translate into meaningful impact.

Cyberconsultancy in Action: Tech for Good
Xalient – Alexander Soeteman & Jeroen Luijten
Every week, another data breach makes headlines. But what actually goes wrong — and how could it have been prevented? This interactive session takes you inside the world of cybersecurity and identity & access management, using real-world hacks to explore where vulnerabilities hide and what it takes to stop them. No coding experience needed: curiosity is the only prerequisite.

The Role of Art and Culture in Advancing Social Impact
Olimpia S.I. Ligarotti & Eva Ranzatto (NGO DEI)
Can art change the world? NGO DEI says yes — and they’ll show you how. Through case studies drawn from real exhibitions addressing freedom of expression, displacement, and identity, participants explore how creative practice becomes a vehicle for advocacy. An interactive group simulation then puts you in the driving seat, working across the roles of an arts and culture NGO to plan an exhibition from the ground up.

How to Choose the Right Career Path in a World of Endless Options
Sikko Onnes (Co-author of the book ‘Navigating Your Career’)
The job market is full of options and even fuller of pressure. Consulting, NGOs, government, tech, finance — how do you choose wisely rather than just reactively? Drawing on decades of executive search experience, Sikko Onnes offers a structured, practical framework for comparing very different paths, understanding what employers truly value, and designing a career that fits who you actually are.

Making the Cut: HR Insights from the International Law Sector
The Hague University of Applied Sciences — Andreea Manea
The application process for international law roles is fiercely competitive. This panel-style session cuts straight to what HR professionals actually look for at the shortlisting stage — what makes a CV stand out, what sinks a motivation letter, and how to position yourself strategically in a field where every detail counts. Common pitfalls, evolving expectations, and the role of AI in applications are all on the table.

Keynote

13:00-13:15 Opening remarks 

Willem van Nieuwkerk (Dean of the Faculty of Public Management, Law & Safety at THUAS) & Jill Wilkinson (Managing Director at The Hague Humanity Hub)

followed by Peter Kievoet (Directeur Internationaal en Concernontwikkeling of the Municipality of The Hague)

13:15-13:30 Emma Wedner (Chairperson CoE Advisory Council on Youth)

13:30-13:45 HRH Princess Laurentien van Oranje

Breakout Sessions

Dealing with Hostile People in High-Stakes Negotiations
Speaker: Pascal Comvalius (1for2 Social Innovation)
When tensions run high and the stakes are real, how do you hold your ground without losing the room? Drawing on experience from mediation and crisis negotiation across the globe, Pascal Comvalius shares practical approaches for navigating hostile behaviour — grounded in real-world stories and immediately applicable to your own professional life.

ESG Impact Challenge
A game with real stakes. You’ll receive a fictitious project making bold claims about its social and environmental impact — your job is to interrogate it. Working in teams, you’ll apply critical thinking to assess whether the impact is as advertised, and compete for the winning verdict from our guest judge. Part learning experience, part competition, entirely eye-opening.

The future of the legal profession in the age of AI
Speakers: Rik de Groot (Rabobank), Milan Ilchev (Signify), Jos Smits (Dutch Judiciary), Ana Maria Popescu (Kinaxis)
AI is reshaping legal practice faster than most curricula can keep up. This session brings together legal professionals from across sectors — banking, corporate law, the judiciary, and beyond — to explore what digitalisation means for the profession today, and what skills and knowledge the next generation of legal professionals will actually need to thrive.

Trust Under Pressure: (Re)Shaping International Law
Speaker: Kushtrim Istrefi (Utrecht University)
International law is being invoked, stretched, and misused in public and policy debate more than ever before — sometimes loudly, sometimes through deliberate silence. In this session, Associate Professor Kushtrim Istrefi unpacks the current narratives surrounding international law and invites participants to think critically about what it means to uphold, reinterpret, or undermine a framework that the world depends on.

Professional Interoperability Profile
Speaker: Alina Brebenel (European Commission)
What does it take to deliver seamless, cross-border digital public services — and what skills does that require of the professionals behind them? In this interactive session, EU Policy Officer Alina Brebenel draws on the European Commission’s Interoperable Europe Academy to explore the competencies at the heart of digital government, and what interoperability means in practice for the next generation of public sector professionals.

Total War on Disinformation: Lessons for the EU From Ukraine’s Fight Against FIMI
Speakers: Dr Adrianus van Heusden (European Commission) and Joshua Levine (researcher on disinformation and media literacy at THUAS, journalist)
Ukraine has been fighting foreign information manipulation and interference on the front lines — and the EU is watching closely. This session examines what Europe can learn from Ukraine’s battle against disinformation, what approaches translate across contexts, and where the limits lie. A timely and unflinching look at one of the defining challenges of our political moment.

Who Defines Development? Reframing Power with The N’NINKIE Research Lab
Speaker: Stella Rothenberger (N’NINKIE)
Whose knowledge shapes development? And whose gets left out? Using Sierra Leone as a case study, this interactive workshop challenges participants to examine how Western frameworks dominate global development and social work — often at the expense of locally rooted knowledge and leadership. Together, we’ll explore what genuinely community-led approaches look like, and what it would take for universities and institutions to prepare students for realities beyond the Western social work canon.

Rebuilding Trust in Global Trade: From Exploitation to Equal Partnership
Speaker: Max Koffi (Equal Trade Alliance)
Global trade as we know it was not built on fairness — and trust in the system is fraying. This session invites students and young professionals to rethink the dominant models of development and explore how entrepreneurship, governance, and co-ownership can help build something more equitable. Drawing on concrete initiatives connecting Africa and Europe, Max Koffi makes the case for trade as a force for dignity and shared prosperity.

WYCJ and The Hague Student Climate Summit 2026
Speaker: Julius Kruse (The Hague Student Climate Summit 2026) & Liliana Gaddi (WYCJ)
Climate accountability depends on trust — trust in multilateral systems, in the institutions meant to uphold them, and in the next generation of advocates pushing them forward. This session brings together two youth-led climate initiatives to explore what meaningful climate action looks like in an era of eroding institutional credibility, and what role young professionals can play in holding the line.

Reckoning without Justice? Case study on Angola
Speakers: Maarten van Munster (THUAS) & Isabel Duesterhoeft (THUAS)
How should societies deal with a violent past after war ends? Is peace possible without justice — and can reconciliation hold when victims feel unheard and perpetrators go unaccountable? This session takes on some of the hardest questions in transitional justice, using Angola as its lens: a country that emerged from decades of civil war without criminal prosecutions or formal truth commissions, yet where reconciliation has nonetheless taken shape. Through ongoing research on legitimacy and civic perceptions in Angola, the session explores what that silence has meant — for peace, for memory, and for trust. Participants then work through concrete dilemmas drawn from post-conflict settings, wrestling with the ethical tensions and competing priorities that societies face when emerging from violence. There are no easy answers here — only sharper questions and the critical thinking to navigate them.

Designing Trust: How Good Governance Shapes Real-World Impact
Speaker: Mario Villalba Ferreira (Kenniscentrum Mission Zero)
This interactive workshop explores how trust is built (or undermined) through governance design in complex sustainability transitions. Using real-world cases inspired by experiences in climate governance in Paraguay, inter-municipal cooperation in Ecuador, circular economy governance in The Hague, and inclusion challenges within universities, participants will work together to identify where trust breaks down and how systems can be redesigned to enable cooperation. Rather than focusing only on sustainability outcomes, the session examines the governance structures, incentives, and institutional dynamics that make collaboration possible across sectors, cultures, and conflicting interests. A key message of the workshop is: “Trust is not built only by bringing people together. It is built by designing systems where cooperation is possible.”

European Professionals: Mastering the European Profession
Speaker: Mendeltje van Keulen (THUAS)
Working for Europe doesn’t mean working in Brussels. From local governments and national ministries to the Port of Rotterdam and human rights NGOs, thousands of professionals across the continent shape and implement EU legislation every day — often without ever setting foot in an EU institution. This session, grounded in THUAS’s research on the changing role of Europe, opens up that world. Drawing on a rich collection of real professional stories gathered at europeanprofessionals.eu, Mendeltje van Keulen walks you through the surprising variety of EU-adjacent career paths — and helps you start mapping where your own skills and ambitions might fit.

Office Gossip: To trust or not to trust?
Speaker: Dominique Darmon (THUAS, Award winning author)
You’re by the coffee machine. A colleague leans in: “Did you hear about the manager and Jane from accounting?” What do you do? Most of us have been told that gossip is unprofessional — but the research tells a more nuanced story. In this workshop, award-winning author and senior lecturer Dominique Darmon uses concrete cases to explore how gossip functions as a communication tool, when it erodes trust, and how — if handled thoughtfully — it can actually be used to your advantage.

Panel

Moderators: Sam Muller – THUAS & Iza Piacentini – THUAS

• Rick Lawson: Chair of the ‘College voor de Rechten van de Mens’, the National Human Rights Institute of the Netherlands
• Marieke van Iperen: CEO & Co-Founder of Settly, an employee relocation platform for international talent
• Emma Wedner: Chairperson CoE Advisory Council on Youth

Location: Aula

Conclude your journey at the Forum with an informal networking reception, the perfect opportunity to engage further with fellow changemakers.