As a reformed lawyer, Helen Kuyper learned the rules so she could break them properly. After working for the Dutch government as an innovation expert for eight years, she started her own facilitation company, eventually founding Bring on the Zoo with Lily Martens. Helen specialises in facilitating multi-stakeholder and therefore often multi-cultural initiatives. Projects include ACT, Tchibo’s Change Labs and the WE Program. Blessed with a mindset for relentless progress and the talent to stay sane when things go crazy, Helen loves complexity and large-scale change processes.

After a successful career as a journalist, editor-in-chief, publisher and innovation media expert, Lily Martens made a radical career switch to focus on creativity and meaningful change. Building Bring on the Zoo, a fluid network of like-minded people, sounded like the best answer to the complexity Lily loves to work with. These days she combines all she has ever done and learned in media with her extensive experience as international facilitator and coach. Lily is known for her unconventional approach, boundless energy, and disruptive nature. You have been warned.

A true activist at heart, Caroline Rennie combines realism with an optimistic, forward-thinking perspective. She stands for leading change for sustainability within and beyond supply chains, using dialogue and participatory practices. Before being seduced into the Zoo, she served as Director Communications Environment at Tetra Pak International, Environmental Affairs Director at Continental Can PET Division and oversaw the development of recycling regulations as Political Advisor to the California Waste Management Board. Caroline is the most serious and the funniest Zoo-member; she matches insatiable curiosity and deep knowledge with a great sense of humour.

Idil makes things happen. She stands by colleagues from the community, assists teams, recruits new members and is a wise and experienced voice in the strategy team. Idil’s skills as an international facilitator shine through in all her activities. She is a Theory U practitioner, Deep Democracy instructor and accredited ILO PGA facilitator and has ample experience in conflict resolution and working with vulnerable groups. After working as a sustainability consultant for over a decade, she directed social programs on human rights in supply chains. She also co-founded an NGO on social inclusion. Working with BOTZ has altered her perspective on sustainable change. Co-creation and collaboration are top of her list now.

Before he became a storyteller, Connor was an engineer. He did a bachelor’s in Aerospace Engineering (his parents wanted him to get a serious degree), worked in Germany and India, and then enrolled at TU Delft in the Netherlands where he did his Master’s in Engineering and Policy Analysis. One of his professors discovered his talent for writing and gave him the mind-shifting advice not to waste any more time on technical stuff but focus on communication. Connor went for it and now combines the best of both worlds. He works as a story engineer, creating tools that help people work with stories. Oasis, the platform/app BOTZ developed for impact measuring, is one of his pet projects.

Neeltje is the Zoo’s visual treasure keeper. In terms of energy and enthusiasm, she definitely leads the pack. As the most colourful Zoo-member (quite literally) she somehow also manages to be the most invisible person in the room, an important quality for a photographer. Fresh out of art college, with a specialization in documentary photography, she vowed she would never do portraits. Luckily, for us and her, BOTZ changed her perspective. Over the past six years she has done amazing things as BOTZ’s designated photographer/creative, documenting the WE Program, harvesting meetings and giving creative masterclasses.

After finishing her master’s in New Journalism, Beanca started writing for magazines, NGO’s, multinationals, and start-ups. During the span of her career, she has interviewed hundreds of people - from budding artists and grassroots activists to politicians, scientists, farmers, and factory workers. In recent years she made a slow shift towards activism and impact story telling in her personal and professional life, working for movements such as Slow Food, Transition Towns, the Animal Politics Foundation, and the WE Program. For BOTZ she is always on the hunt to capture stories that have the power to boost change.

Creatively inclined to blow your mind, Yvonne uses design to bring clarity to complex matters. As BOTZ’s in-house art director she is responsible for a wide collection of projects, ranging from books and magazines to posters, postcards, reports, flipbooks, manuals, and websites. Yvonne graduated from the Willem de Kooning academy in Rotterdam, a cradle for creating pioneers. Combining beauty with purpose is what motivates her as a designer; she wants her work to be rooted in something more than just visual appeal.