As Head of Programme at Waag, Ivonne investigates how we can make citizens resilient to the onset of smart city technologies. By raising awareness about the risks for society, she hopes to empower people and help them to create viable alternatives. Although we should not be naive about the way our personal lives and democratic structures are being influenced by centralized and closed technology, she is optimistic about the different ways people are finding to harness the same power for social innovation and the common good.

Coming from an interaction design background she has been a project manager, project developer and team leader for many years in the ICT and innovation domain. Her expertise lies in understanding the uncertainties disruptive technologies can bring and building practical bridges between the different stakeholder in involved. Whether this is through agile development approaches, co-creation workshops, hackathons, manifestos, labs, pilots or other types of creative research.

As Head of Program at Waag she has lead large European projects like Apps for Europe and is now spearheading the Smart Citizens Lab. From the beginning of the Open Data movement in the Netherlands she have been a vocal advocate of Open Government practices, through projects like Apps for Amsterdam, Code for NL, Making Sense, Clarity and E-Dem.nl. She specialises in the way peer-to-peer technology and bottom-up participation influences the policy making process.

Currently she is a board member of the ISOC foundation and Code for NL and is a mother of three children.