ElroyCOM Team

ElroyCOM was founded in 2005 by Dr. Elroy Cocheret de la Morinière (1970). He was an assistant-professor Science & Society at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, chairman of the Dutch sector committee for Communication and master coordinator of Communication studies at the Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen. He is the chief trainer, advisor and personal coach at ElroyCOM. Elroy practices what he preaches: he designs every training with both educative and fun elements. Trainees and coachees describe him as involved, resourceful and helpful. Offering theoretical background and combining it with means to put it to practice are definitely his strongpoints.

Paulien Weikamp (1975) finished a degree in psychology and is now a trainer, actor and personal coach. She has extensive experience in working with academic Master and PhD students, postdocs and professors. Next to this career she writes books for children as well as theater plays. With her background she offers clients extra knowledge from psychology.

Bas Jansen (1974) is a lecturer in psychology and professional training actor. He is also a freelance writer and martial arts (Aikido) teacher. His experience spans the world: he worked in Venezuela, Guatemala, Bolivia, The Netherlands, France, and Israël. Bas easliy improvises, depending on the wishes of the participants. He is always fun to watch or interact with because he puts his heart in it. While you easliy forget he is only an actor when he plays his roles, he always remains professional and makes sure you reach your goals.

Mark van der Zwan (1971) has a background as a technical engineer and consultant in industry, financial services and scientific ecuation. He combines this knowledge with his skills as a theatrical director and training actor. He is always friendly and realistic in his approach. He carefully listens to the needs of the group and individual participants. Mark shows great passion in helping you to increase your comunication toolbox.

Joël Aerts (1980) is an independent speaker, author and consultant on leadership. With a background in International Business & Management, his passion is to translate scientific management research to the every day practice of leadership and management. In his workshops he provides participants the chance to absorb the latest insights in leadership and to apply them to their individual situation.

From a young age Joël works for an international non-profit organization leading teams to more than ten developing nations during a seven-year period. In this time Joël takes up the unusual challenge to read a book a week on leadership for a full year and to try out everything that he reads. This unorthodox approach boosts his own leadership development and propels him into training other high potentials. He never stopped reading and trying things out.

Joël used his curiosity and knowledge as the co-author of the popular book ‘MBA in one day’, which he wrote with management author Dr. Ben Tiggelaar. Together they also produced 20 audio-series discussing the best ideas of the twenty most important management thinkers.

Currently Joël is preparing to start his PhD research, studying how leaders develop themselves and what organizations can do to stimulate this process.

Jan van Westerlaak (1956) is a social psychologist and trainer for ElroyCOM. Hij worked also for the university of Groningen (criminology) and the university of Utrecht (psychology). Jan trained also in Ukraine, Hungary, Estonia, Spain, Turkey, Germany and Belgium. He is a specialist in amongst others leadership skills/ management, the intercultural collaborating with people with a different cultural background and the making of right moral choices/ integrity. He is also a licensed first degree teacher and he has a degree from the theatre school of Amsterdam as a qualified director of professional actors and a theatre-teacher. He is often praised for his genuine training enthusiasm.

Hans van Duijn (1974) was born and raised in the village Katwijk aan Zee, and as a boy he was already very observant and able to imitate the behaviour of others. At that time his goal was to make people laugh.
After high school he moved to Utrecht to study Physical Geography at the University. This study appealed to him because of its social relevance (environmental issues) and also the practical courses (fieldwork). During his student years he also started to act in theatre performances.
After finishing his study (MSc.) Hans worked for a year as an environmental consultant (i.a. with GIS) and then decided to follow his passion for acting and followed a 2 year (part-time) acting course.
Upon completing this course Hans started to work as a roleplay actor and he has been doing this with much pleasure since 2005. What’s great for Hans in the work as a roleplay actor is that you meet all different kinds of people in many organisations, you’re improvising and it also has an analytical component (what happens in the interaction between people, and how can you influence that?).
As a physical geographer Hans was studying the environmental processes, and now, as a roleplay actor, he’s an aid to help study the processes between people.

Marijke van Dusseldorp (1960) is a training actor/co-trainer. Marijke is alert, open, and energetic. In her acting she builds on her extensive professional experience and intuition, and makes the people she works with quickly feel at ease. She has a PhD in Human Nutrition and was Assistant Professor at the Wageningen UR and the Radboud University Nijmegen for several years. In 1999 she started to work as a senior project leader, account manager, coach and team manager at TNO Food & Nutrition. During her time at TNO, her emphasis changed from research to human behavior and personal interaction. As she loved playing improvisation theatre, she decided to become a professional training actor. Since 2011, she has been working as an independent training actor and co-trainer, as well as a coach and facilitator of intervision.

Bert Wagenaar van Kreveld graduated with a Masters degree in Spanish from the University of Amsterdam. The subject of his thesis concerned research of conversational implicatures according to the model introduced by Grice. In short this comes down to, “What do people imply more than they actually literally say?” As an actor, he is acutely aware of this fact. Bert completed his foundation course at the Toneelschool in Amsterdam in 1988. In 2005 he graduated from Theateropleiding Selma Susanna. Bert’s main aim as a training actor is to offer an experience by delivering behavioral performances, so that others can further develop awareness of their skills or points of development. This aspect of his work gives him the greatest satisfaction.

Astrid Onderwater graduated in 2006 as social psychologist at the University of Utrecht. After her graduation she has worked eight years on several social scientific research projects, using qualitative research methods. At the same time she develops in the area of theatre and acting and an ideal and practical combination between psychology and acting occurs for her: the ability to retrain and start working as a training actor. Astrid works with great pleasure as training actor: making a contribution to learning processes and the ability to witness ‘aha-moments’ is what makes working as training actor valuable to her. And not unimportantly: fun to do! It’s important to her to make an effort in creating a pleasant and safe environment so that participants will feel at ease as much as possible during practice.

Louise Mennen (1969) is a nutritionist by training and received her PhD in 1997 at the WUR. Thereafter she went to work in Paris and became an associate professor. During that time she wrote many papers and successful research grants. After spending almost 15 years in research and observing the scientific world, she wanted to spend her time helping scientists to become better leaders. Therefore she decided to work as a trainer and coach to contribute to science in a different way.
As a trainer and coach she understands you well and can at the same time confront you with spot-on questions to help you reach your goal. She loves to connect to people since they all have great stories to tell. She enjoys it when she sees people grow.
Louise is also co-trainer at international leadership programmes for scientists in Europe and Africa. She fully understands the challenges scientists encounter during their career, due to her large experience in the scientific community. Her extensive experience in leadership communication training and personal coaching enables her to help scientists grow to become passionate leaders in their field.

Tim Vogelenzang is concerned with the development and renewal of internal processes and systems used by ElroyCOM.

Jenny Noll is the office manager at ElroyCOM. She supports the planning and organisation of the courses and communicates with the customers and clients of ElroyCOM.
Jenny has a degree in Dutch Language and Culture.